World War III
by widowcapsicle
Summary: "There's a lot of mystery left to be solved here," she said. He agreed, though they were talking about two different things. She was talking about the case and he was talking about her. He was transported to the future only to find himself fighting with her against her past. They had a lot more in common than they thought and this was unnerving to the woman.
1. He's Alive

The setting is in the marvel cinematic universe, except I hate that they nerfed her in the whole universe so I emphasized her character strengths like how they are in the early comics. Steve's abilities are also canon to the older, late 60's comics. Not to spoil, but really mad about how they treated her in endgame, so decided to write myself to do her some justice :)

Also Rated M solely for the gory parts and extreme violence.

I don't own rights to Marvel. If I did, romanogers would be canon.

* * *

_Sure own a lot of black for someone responsible for a lot of red. _Her internal monologue helps put everything into perspective. She never really had a sounding board, just professional relationships with just about everyone she has met. Her profile's classified, as is everyone's, and despite Fury and his superiors and _maybe_ Maria Hill having access to them, they were all hardly friends. Natasha explains her dynamic with her colleagues as a..._mutual commitment? _She does not ask them for a late night drink and no one asks her to hang out outside of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Tony Stark was holding some kind of gala and if it were not for the new development of some iron costume that went unchecked (which, if you asked her, was their fault for not regulating the weapons-producer genius in the first place anyway, despite her own interest in his creation of guns and ammos), she would have never been asked to a night out by her cyclops boss. The redhead was sifting through her dresses for the night's gala. They were all black. Then she looked through her shoes. Black.

"Barton's going with you," the monops said. Then he proceeded to talk about the specifics of the case, really boring spy stuff.

Sometimes she missed the thrill of the KGB. She would never say it out loud for fear of being misinterpreted as her being a mole, or of the like. It was the zeal of the jobs and flying jets and fighting for a cause, even if it was a bad one. Sometimes being an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. gets confusing when half of the orders her boss gives her are redacted. She does not know why she's doing something and for what reason, but as a soldier, she does so. Natasha would kill herself before going back to Russia and the Leviathan, she just doesn't have a grasp on her purpose anymore. The faith she swore to be a part of an organization that does good, she took maybe because it will make up for all the bad, she doesn't really see as binding as she thought initially, and that's because of all she saw with Fury behind the scenes. There's some secret lab with a glowing blue _cube thing_ that he refuses to explain to her. Her clearance was just below Clint's and even then, he doesn't know anything either. It makes it difficult to fight for something when she doesn't know what side it's on.

"Clint makes missions boring sometimes," she says with a smirk as she clips on an earring, timed perfectly as the agent walks past her to hear. "Imagine going in a mission blind-sided with no watch. That's where the fun is." She smiles and the director's face doesn't change.

"I've saved your ass a lot, kid," Barton spout defensively.

_Would it have been so bad if you hadn't?_ Natasha slips on her black thigh holster, uncoincidentally matching with her black everything. She settles her gun inside and a knife in a corresponding pocket. The dialogue in her head continues, about the many times Barton has been there to get her out of trouble. Especially, that one time he was sent to kill her and he saved her instead, throwing a big middle finger to Fury's orders. That's a trait she enjoys sharing with him, being able to sometimes say "fuck you" with her actions and have the agency to respond differently to missions when the one-eyed-man was deemed wrong. Not that she was always right, but a certain kind of pride is gained if you correct your boss enough.

But, yeah. What if he hadn't been there to save her? She never really fit the trope of a woman needing saving, like the ones who accompany men in stupid superhero movies. She almost hated it sometimes, the Red Room taught her that being subject to vulnerability is a human weakness that the serum cannot fix for her. And so explains her whole life which has been this rigid chain of professional relationships. Countless of them. All with an objective to prevent being unguarded. Even Clint, who she knows deserves some insight on her life because he _did_ spare it, but does she really owe him that? There's no benefit to that. _Why can't people just go out and eat ice cream together, talk about their respective jobs, and be qualified as good friends? Why is intimacy a part of it?_ Maybe she was just jealous that people can create those kinds of relationships and she was stuck in between a place she once belonged to, and a new one that taught her there's more to the people she was forced to kill when she was ten for target practice.

Sometimes it's easier to forget that people have substance to them.

Clint threw a headless arrow at her. "Let's go. You're not usually this slow," he said with a smile that warranted an attack from her, which she refrained from because she's not a fifteen-year-old boy.

A black Rolls Royce was already on the curb of the headquarters waiting for the suited pair, _STRIKE Team: Delta_, as S.H.I.E.L.D. culture dubbed them. "You talked to Fury, yet?" The woman started conversation as the car drove them through New York traffic. The other agent just shook his head. "I don't know how much I can trust the man if he's not giving me reason to."

Clint looked at her with concerning and caring eyes. "There is so much more that he's done to prove his loyalty to the organization, you know?"

The woman met his eyes, her own rigid and unmoving. "Yes, but one wrong move, despite allegiance to the group, can interfere with your credibility as a whole. You know that." Barton sighs, now understanding why she was so strict on the matter.

It has been _at least_ six years of the two of them working together. Part of what made it difficult for Natasha to acquaint herself with the organization was that no one trusted her, Fury being the most stubborn one. She hadn't known him that well and Clint knew that if Eyepatch took her in despite having ordered to kill her in the first place, he saw something in her. He was very hard on her for the first few months, overworking her with training and legal codes. It was more physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding than they put the new recruits through (though she got through it because nothing was harder than the environment she grew up in). Everyone else in the enforcement agency took his back those months he pushed her. She noticed the side eyes and narrow conversations. It also contributed to the everlasting distance she has kept with everyone else up to this point, why her relationships have been strictly professional. Three years later, everyone warmed up to her. It was better than she could imagine, people greeting her in the hallways despite her always intimidating demeanor, her superiors giving her leeway to do more things and not under Clint's supervision, and basically being treated like any other agent. There was a sense of freedom she had never felt before, it wasn't an attachment to an organization, but an allegiance to doing something good with her life. And then someone tried to frame her and heads turned like the last three years never happened. _Why was it so easy to lose trust in me?, _she would always think the days after the commotion passed. The rumor was that a terrorist had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D., and someone was quick to point at her (even though there were many newcomers, those subordinate to her), and Natasha felt all that she had worked for disintegrated in that moment. Clint was the only one to save her (yet again; there seems to be a pattern, she's noticed), introducing her to his family and keeping her with them for awhile until he straightened things out with Fury and the whole agency.

She gained their trust again. It has been another three years, and now the target is on Fury. A part of her feels like she should give way because of the way she felt when people pointed fingers at her despite her innocence. The issue was that she didn't actually do anything and was never caught doing anything that could jeopardize her position with the agency, but she found Fury actively doing something.

"I just care for him, is all," she whispers, looking out the window, then back at him. "I just don't want whatever it was to happen again." She was emotionless. The black car parked in front of a massive stack of stairs leading to a building with Greek columns. It was grand, as expected from a billionaire arms-extraordinaire.

"It won't," Clint assured her as he stepped out of the car with her. They walked up the stairs, Natasha tapping onto the hidden transmitter and mic in her ear. And as the guards approached, the night was suddenly met with Natalie Rushman, and no other personality.

The two worked in sync, as they always have. The moment they entered the greek colosseum, they separated silently, working timely with each other, the art of nospeak tandem, which is something _STRIKE Team: Delta_ was notoriously known for; in-and-out, no fuss and no extraction needed.

"I don't understand why there are no guards up here," Natalia said as she made her way across one side of the building. "I mean there are-" she noted, referring to the cameras "-but not _people_ guards."

"I guess Stark can handle himself just fine," he spoke over their intercom. "He's a weapons-dealer after all. He's probably carrying."

"How much do you want to bet that someone who makes guns and ArmaLite rifles and explosives doesn't actually carry them?" She smirks as she enters a vent, crawling through like a spider. Her _Widow's Line_, essentially a grappling hook that attaches and electrocutes whatever it lands on, shoots her up a chute and lifts her to another opening in a vent.

"Ten bucks," she heard him grunt on their comm, hearing a muffled bang afterwards. He was prying open a door. The act was too common, she could tell just from the _kind_ of grunt he makes—he possesses distinct types. There's the type where he gets shot, the kind when he gets cut, and the kind when he throws something.

"You're cheap," she responds with a contesting tone. She was crawling through the vents, still.

"I need to feed my kids," he says followed by another grunt. That was the kind where he needed to jump and launch himself off something, probably a pipe on the ceiling.

"Ten bucks, it is. You're going to-" she stops mid-sentence, alarming Barton.

"Widow, you there?" He pauses his rummaging through the building. She hears her breathing from the comm, and didn't hear any other racket so she couldn't possibly be in danger. Therefore, he continues his search.

"Yeah, just—" she stammers again. "I found it—_them._"

"What?"

"There's more than one suit, Clint," Natalia stares at the rows of iron costumes, painted in variations of silver, gold, and red. "I count seven."

"Holy shit," she hears the agent whisper on the other side. "He's in big trouble."

"_Very _big." She slips out of the vent and into the room, staring at each one of Stark's inventions. "He has to be releasing this at the gala. There's no way he'd bring all of this here, it's not his venue or his office. This isn't just a storage room."

"That's not gonna happen," Clint says.

"These aren't so bad," Natalia said. Admiring them before getting back to the task at hand. She was about to head to the computer when someone enters the room and she finds herself hiding behind one of the suits.

"It's unexpected but, I think you should cover your eyes for this one," she heard the familiar voice of a Stark, distinct with its tinge of pride and confidence.

"Tony, you didn't," it was followed by a woman's. "That's a lot."

"I _know_. I was thinking: hand these over to the government, then set up a protocol to who can use them. And I'll be the one in charge of assigning that based on who the people are and _how_ they are." She looked around the corner and saw the man presenting his robots to a blonde woman. She turned back and listened instead of watching.

"They're not going to let you do this, you know?"

"Yeah, but I'm very persuasive," he says, and the spy can only hear the smirk forming on his face.

"I know, but this is the government," the woman said, and Natalia just had to nod in agreement despite the two not knowing her presence.

"I'm gonna show it tonight," he said as their voices faded and the door closes again.

She heads over to the computer to replicate the files and then she hears ruckus in her and Clint's telecom. Natalia unplugs the serial bus from the computer and, without a word, heads to where the other agent is fighting someone.

That someone turned to be some-_others_. He had subdued three men and a few others followed. He was in the middle of a fight with someone, and though she knows he could handle five more, she came to help for the fun of it. She ricochets off one guard to kick another in the face, then chokes one to unconsciousness. The next guy gets elbowed and another she locked with a scissor choke between her legs. To make it easier, she zaps one with a _Widow's Bite_ from her wrist, coming from a cuff that delivered electroshocks when touched or when deployed.

Her and Hawkeye walk out of the scene, and passing a mirror, he says, "I can't believe I still look this good after that one."

She rolled her eyes and laid her palm, face up, in front of his face, as they walked out of the building. "He didn't have a weapon."

His eyes narrow at her. "How do I know you're not lying?"

"When do I ever?" She says with a smile, as he steps in the waiting Rolls Royce with her, grabbing his wallet from the door compartment o the car and giving her a ten-dollar bill.

Fury got ahold of everything on the Iron Man files from Tony Stark's hard drive, taking the USB from Natasha. He debriefed team Delta on their mission and asked them to meet him at a classified room in the building. He gave them their clearance codes and left. The duo looked at each other, confused, before separating to get out of their gala attire.

"What's this all about?" The archer asks as they took the stairs five flights down.

She stared at the code, baffled, though hearing Clint, but failing to respond. He just sighs as they take the steps in silence.

They are met with a dark hallway that led to double doors, giant ones made of rock. When coded for the doors, they were met with another pair. This went on three times until what looked like an underground, unkept secret facility turned into a technological hub. There were no more stone doors, but panels of lights across glass walls separating even more rooms in the room itself. Everything goes noticed, you can look at whatever anyone was doing, and it looks like a ground for biotechnology. Someone was working on a bionic arm that replicates Tony Stark's weapons. Another was working on some sort of artificially intelligent drone. All can be seen through their glass walls. People wore white lab coats, and those that did not carried heavy ammo with them, guarding each project. The pair was distracted with all the experiments that were going around them that they didn't realize the one room not divided in glass, and was placed in the center of all those glass partitions. There was a man on the table. When Natasha took notice she was distracted again by seeing scientists working on the blue cube that she had caught Fury with awhile ago. She made her way to that room, peering inside even though the guards weren't en garde. They were allowing the Black Widow access but she remained on the outside.

Three scientists hovered around the glowing thing. Five minutes after watching them, she took notice of the fact that no one was touching it. They were all observing it, but realized that they were trying to form an extraction of something inside it. The conversation was isolated inside the glass box, but she could make out that they often repeated "I don't know"s and "energy" quite often through lip reading.

Natasha was taken aback by Clint's call to her name. She left the box alone and walked over to where most of the attention was, a man on a table. They weren't operating on him, but they weren't doing anything to him either. "He's in equilibrium with it, if we destabilize what's around him he could go into shock," someone said. She acted ore like a doctor more than a scientist, though there's varying professions to go around in the hub, she's sure. It took her awhile to realize that the man was in ice, dressed in an _american flag?_

"How do we take him out of it? He's still alive," another said. The spy watched all of this unfold, going into a shock of her own and gaining a concept of who this man was.

They began by chiseling the greater ice around him, careful not to thaw the living inside it, and wary about breaking it too thin, or shattering it altogether for that matter. Her and her partner stood in awe until a figure stood next to her. "We found him just a couple of days ago," Fury's voice resounded. "We found _that_ a couple of weeks before and when I sent out a group to survey area to get some clues into what it was, he was right next to it all along" he said as he pointed to the glass bubble that held the blue cube Natasha was just observing. She nodded in understanding, focusing her attention back to the frozen soldier. "He's been there no less than seventy years. We don't even know how his body didn't age or how he's surviving."

And then they put piles of blankets on top of him, except they were releasing steam. She was sure that it was made to thaw the remaining sheet of ice around him. Suddenly, the whole building grew cold. She heard one of the doctors say: "lower the thermostat. We're altering his environment and if we don't try to stabilize the room with how his body's been thermoregulating in the ice, it won't maintain homeostasis. Because he's been trapped and accustomed to this temperature, we need to ease him into increasing it or we _will_ lose him."

"I can't believe he's alive," she heard Clint whisper after awhile of silence in awe of the spectacle before them. Water dripped all over the table as heat left the blankets, melting the ice and vaporizing with the hot and cold contact. The doctors were just waiting now. And once his forearms were visible, the head doctor (she suspected "head" partly because she was the only one talking and telling everyone what to do) kept her fingers on his wrist to check for a pulse. She said it was weak, but that it will do. Next thing the pair knew, needles were being stuck into him and his red, white and blue uniform was being cut to pieces.

Five minutes after they hooked him up to equipment, they were met with a gush of wind. "Stand back," Fury said. They stepped back to see that the center hub was being enclosed by glass, creating its own room like the others around them. It's become an operating room now. And before the glass settles together to close into a room, the three heard one continuous beep, a resonating flatline indication. Then the room closes and noise was eliminated, the agents and the director standing as if watching a silent movie. The man was dying.

The defibrillator comes out but before a doctor could use it, the head puts her arm out to stop him. She starts shouting at him. So no shock was delivered. Nothing was happening other than the fact that everyone was still, staring at the heart monitor.

"W-what are they doing? Why aren't they doing anything?" Natasha said, remaining as calm as she could. She has seen dying men before. She's _killed _men before. Her newfound allegiance to an institution that does good does not erase the fact that she can still kill. She has definitely grown in her own empathy, but she still has no attachments. No one has attachments to that man on the table, but seeing the doctors, the one who control lives, standing idle when something could or should be done, was unnerving to her.

"I don't know," Fury says, though not as alarmed as her. Clint knows that the man has full faith in all of the doctors working on the patriot.

It was not until ten minutes have passed when the defibrillator was used. It didn't work. The doctor upped the voltage. And, again, nothing.

Natasha sighs. Clint stares, his eyes the only part of him showing desperation. They watched the whole thing unfold, and when Clint was about turn back the other spy held his arm. "Look," she said. Another shock was delivered and the monitor spikes at an alarmingly high heart rate. The blonde man sits up on the table, gasps, then falls back unconscious.

Fury let out a sigh of relief.

_Steve Rogers is invincible, after all,_ Natasha thought.


	2. 2012

Lemme tell ya, my bank account would look so much better if I owned Marvel. ;)

* * *

He was sweating so hard, very unlike his nature. The serum prevents him from ever overexerting his thermal capacity. He sweats less than anyone else because his system doesn't work that way. The soldier tires in short bursts, if he punches with full strength more than twenty times, he toils only for a few seconds before he gets back to his optimal self. This makes it impossible for him to ever be exhausted. His "I can do this all day" byword was made literally true after he undertook the super soldier project.

Small white discs were on points of his biceps and pectorals. He had a few of the circular tapes on his temple and forehead too. The ones on his head had a cord attached to them that led to a giant box that he thought was measuring his movements or of the like. He wasn't really sure. _Times really have changed. _He was told that Howard Stark created everything that was being used on him. It formed some sort of comfort, because of the familiarity. The captain heard that the surgeon who spearheaded the operation on him was the granddaughter of Doctor Erskine, the man who made him what he is today…or what he was yesterday. There's another point of comfort.

"It's so we can measure your vitals while you work," she said to him regarding the little electrode things they stuck on him. "To see if your system's recovered enough to be able to do what you did before." She was holding onto his file, which he got a chance to look at earlier. The German doctor's signatures and journals were attached to almost all of the papers on his biography. It was hard considering that the last time he remembered seeing the man was moments after he had transformed. And then the German doctor was shot right in front of him. Doctor Abigail Erskine, M.D., the woman in front of him, was reading through all that he wrote, what he _expected_ Steve Rogers to turn out to be. Super strength. Super intelligence. Heightened speed_. All the good stuff, _Rogers thought in accordance. And as he went through the file, he saw that they were compiled by Margaret Carter. So sad as he was to have missed their dance, he grew even worse with the finding that she had passed. Not only was he brought to the future where he knew no one, but to find that he had missed the woman only by a few months took a toll on him. There was some resentment because the organization didn't find him sooner, but knowing him, didn't dwell on it because it wasn't their fault.

Peggy Carter's notes on his file were there only to concur that what Doctor Erskine thought Captain America was going to be were correct. The doctor today was just trying to see if Steve Rogers was still capable of all that were in his criteria.

His sweating, though, was a problem.

He was put in a training room, with dummies and simulations. The doctor and a few other scientists watched through a window as he fought whatever came to him. They told him that they spent time looking for his shield, but couldn't find it, so he was working on hand-to-hand combat at the moment.

"His agility is above the par. If anything, he's stronger than what Agent Carter explained him to be," said Erskine. Every hit on a punching bag was measured for power and strength, reaching superhuman levels as expected. At one point, a dummy was split in half. He was punching too much, scaring almost everyone in the building who saw him.

_Why am I here?_ He said over and over again in his head. He didn't know what to think, or how to feel. They hadn't even shown him what the outside world looked like. So he punched and kicked what they threw at him in the training room.

"You're sweating because of your time in the ice. Your body's still trying to regulate as if you're still in that environment," Erskine said to him after his training. It explained why he was so cold and hot at the same time, like a fever, though he's not really allowed to get sick. The serum prohibits that. He did hear that the floor of the headquarters he was in was modulated a whole ten degrees colder than its usual to accommodate for him. The director with the eyepatch made it clear to him that he isn't held captive and he's free to roam the floor. And after they made sure that everything with him was perfect, he can go out and live whatever life he wanted, though the director did tell him that a job was open for him if he wanted it. It almost sounded like he was pleading for him to take the spot.

He wasn't surprised, he was built to be a weapon in the first place.

The food was surprisingly good, way better than the MREs back in the war. "We won." Those were the first words the director told him. He woke up in what looked like a private hospital room. The moment he opened his eyes in confusion, the director spoke to him. He doesn't recall his name, but he believes that it might have been Nick or something like that. Then he toured him around the floor. People in black roamed the halls; he was told that those were agents. "Agents of shield," said Fury. He looked at him with a reassuring smile, and something tells the soldier that the man doesn't do that very much. "Margaret Carter really wanted that name when she created this, as a tribute to you. So she labeled us that first before finding words to fit the acronym." The man laughed a little. It doesn't sound like he does that often either, Steve thought.

"It's a shame y'all couldn't find the shield though," the soldier responded with half a smile in remembrance. The director nodded in agreement. He showed him the training facilities, there must have been more than twenty rooms dedicated solely for training. The food place was extremely large. Then they headed to the offices of those overlooking everyone on the floor. Nick Fury's was at a different floor partly because he oversaw the whole building.

Then he was showed to his room. Something tells him that they don't do this for everyone. It wasn't large, just a bed and a dresser full of black clothes that he had seen agents wear. There were a few pairs of white shirts and gray sweats, probably for running. There was a picture of him, Bucky, and a few other soldiers on a bedside table. _The Howling Commandos,_ he smiled at the memory. Another frame had him and his mom before he was experimented on. "We wanted to put those there to make it feel a little bit more like home," said the director. A part of the soldier feels like it wasn't Nick's idea, but put him at ease nonetheless. Right next to the pictures were a giant book. "And that's a little something to get you started on catching up to the twenty-first century." He tabled reading the book for later, just because he wasn't comfortable at the moment to begin that yet. It was too surreal. He saw his suit laid on the bed last. "And we had to cut that off of you in order to operate, but someone sewed it back together. We did our best to preserve it." The soldier nodded in understanding, sitting next to the suit and setting it on his lap to marvel at what had been given to him.

A week later and he's now sitting on a table eating 2012 food, in a 2012 facility, full of 2012 people after training in a 2012 room with 2012 doctors. It was very hard to believe. And he didn't know what to do. It's not like they're holding him prisoner or anything, but because he was limited to the floor in order for them to make sure that he's perfect, there aren't a lot of options. So he ate his food and went back for seconds, thirds and a fourth, noticing the person giving him the food having his fleeting excitement every time. It made the soldier chuckle.

He went back to his room, after, laying on the bed and staring at the ceiling. He missed Peggy and Howie. He smiled at the fact that they created this, whatever this building and this mission and this organization stood for that he's living now. Peggy always wanted to fight wrong and be heard. She wanted to change the world and save everyone in it, almost more than he did. Steve shed a tear at the thought that she succeeded—or is succeeding with the ongoing accomplishments of the institution, or so he has read. She gave the mantle to Director Fury, the soldier gaining trust in the man because Agent Carter wouldn't fail at appointing her successor.

There was something else on the bedside table that he took notice after the first time Fury had shown him his room. It was a compass that held Peggy's picture, something he had carried with him in all of his missions during the war, and the only thing he carried with him as he crashed the jet into the arctic. That picture was his last memory before his comatose. He can't believe they saved it. Her picture was washed because of the initial wetness, until drying later when the soldier was stuck in ice, he was told. The freezing preserved much of the image.

Then he saw his picture with Bucky and the rest of the soldiers he saved that one night from the HYDRA base.

The soldier cried like he had never before. It was mounting with the week's events. Every day that he lived in this millennia was a dose of reality he shouldn't be a part of. Then growing was a resentment of the people who had saved him. _Why did they have to do that? Go the extra mile for saving someone who should be dead._ Steve thought that every day, even though deep down he knew that he was wrong and he had a sense of gratitude to the people who saved him. His dissonant thoughts were akin to his character, but a newfound world, placing the man out of time, was hard to grasp even for the most thankful of people. Part of him understands the work of doctors and of the hopeful people who had looked up to the Captain America of the second world war. But he wasn't that man anymore. The people that made him who he was were no longer with him. There was a disconnect with time, that he felt he cannot be who he was without Peggy and Howard and Bucky and his mom. _Captain America was a people, not one man._ The hero was made possible by the people, Steve thought. And so his selflessness was even more defined to this day, owing every bit of his life to the people of today and the people of yesterday. It was a conflict within himself that made it difficult to think of what he is supposed to be. Was there a purpose?

_Peggy would want me to be a part of this. Of whatever it is that she created._ He sniffed the tears away, smiling at the pictures he spends hours staring at every day. Steve walked out of his room and into the showers, taking a towel with him and a pair of sweatpants to change into.

* * *

It was another day and he woke up doing the same thing he had done the in the past week. He goes over to his wardrobe, changes into the black cargo pants that he was given and one of the black shirts. He had noticed that his were a bit different. There was a faint star on the chest of all his shirts, something very distinct that lets him know that people really created everything in this room special for him. The Captain put on black boots and a belt he had been provided with and walked to the room of food for breakfast.

"How have you been feeling?" The doctor asked him, as she does every day. He was sitting on top of a gurney. He goes into this makeshift hospital room that they created on the floor, because they couldn't always bring him down to medical; his clearance didn't allow for that. These were special circumstances also, considering that they needed to check on him three times a day.

"The same," he responded. He felt a little cooler than usual, though. The doctor took that into account, smiling at her checklist. He didn't really understand what that means. She said that he didn't have to do any strenuous activity for the day, even though she knows that he would go against that anyway because working out was the only way he can blow off steam. So all she said was that he pull his punches, because no physical tests will be done on him.

He headed out of the room to go to the only training room he was familiar with, except it was occupied ever since the doctors took away the machines that were supposed to be measuring him. The room was now open for anyone and no longer restricted to him. There was a wave of reassurance overcoming him. It was a sign that they felt he was reaching normality (or as normal as it can get for a superhuman). He stood in the room with glass windows where the doctors would usually be when he would be on the scaffold, training. He crosses his arms and watches a spectacle. There were two agents, dressed in the same black that everyone else was. He noticed that their shirts were different and special, like his. On their chests were faint symbols and shapes that he didn't really have a name for. One looked like a chevron arrow and the other was just…unexplainable. Their symbols had dark colors, though. The woman's was red and the man's was purple. Steve looked down at his shirt, seeing that his was gray. They were all there as a distinction, but not enough for really anyone else to notice. Considering he has enhanced sight, though, the shapes sniped at him like a snake.

The woman was giving the man a run for his money. They looked completely matched. No one wins, no one loses. He feels that the only way anyone could ever win is to catch the other on a mistake, but something tells him that both were pretty perfect in combat.

"My greatest agents," said a familiar voice. He didn't turn, but felt Fury stand next to him and watch the same thing that he was. "Everyone calls them STRIKE Team: Delta."

The soldier remained silent, taking in the woman's combos on the man. She landed a hit on his cheek, surprising him and making the spectating Rogers smile. That doesn't look like it happens often. Fury clicks a button that allows them both to hear everything going on inside the training room.

"Come on, Barton. That was very lame of you," she said with a smirk. Cap hears the name.

Agent Barton just laughs as the two walk in circles to size each other up, both in a defensive stance. Their fighting techniques were different and complex, but somehow each's defensive tactic was able to match another. It's as if kick boxing defense could ever work against tae kwon do offense, which is something Steve was not used to seeing. The training was impeccable. Each agent hints at a different martial art with every move. It's something that the soldier does himself, but never really saw anyone else perform.

"I've never seen anything like it" were the first words he said to Fury.

"With time came the growth of different arts in fighting. People learned them all and put them together, ever since your popularity back in the 40s," said the director.

_Back in the 40s._ He still wasn't used to that. The 40s seemed like it was yesterday.

He watched as Barton landed an elbow on the woman's stomach. "You're no match, Romanoff," he says. The woman didn't flinch much at the hit and continued to smile. The talk seemed facetious, considering that to the Captain's eyes, she was most definitely a match. She finds herself in a lock, with Barton on the offense, but finds a ways to kick his legs out from other him. She flips frontward and catches him pinned to the ground with his neck between her hands and her other arms getting ready to punch. It stopped in midair though as she backed off.

Barton shakes it off and stands, as both are sizing each other up once again.

"They're the only ones who can train together," said Fury. "Anyone else who tries to go against them are pretty much dead." It was like he was trying to get Rogers in the ring with one of them. The soldier sensed that. Fury was trying to get a kick out of the soldier's competitive side, except he didn't have one. He's too humble of a person to.

Steve shook his head as he smiled at the two in front of him. "Six years and you still can't finish it," said the man.

"You know that I would have long ago, but who's gonna work with me if you're dead," said Romanoff with a smile followed by a grunt as she throws kicks that the other fends off perfectly.

"Aw, is that your way of saying you'll miss me?" He takes the woman's head and flips her, similar to what he had done before. She retaliates, instead of submitting like he had—when he was pinned—by rolling over and grabbing his leg from under him. He jumped straight up to prevent being pinned again.

"No, there's just no one else competent enough," she said with a smirk.

"That's a compliment, you know," Barton said as they traded punches.

Steve knew he wanted to be a part of this. Not the fighting, or the banter, but whatever this was. And in Peggy's name he says something to the director after a long time of silence between them.

"I'll do it."


	3. Withdraw

Sadly, I still don't own Marvel.

* * *

"That was a hard punch," the arrow man said. He was putting some kind of cream on his cheek, where a dark color was forming from when it met her fist just ten minutes before.

"Sorry," she said unapologetically as she downed a whole bottle of water.

The two were still in the training room, not noticing the two men talking from inside the glass partition. They had agreed to a fifteen minute break after the thirty-minute sparring session.

"Look," Clint was the first to notice. He wrapped a towel around his neck and set on a bench, gesturing his head for Natasha to look at Fury and the soldier next to him.

"He's looking better," the agent said as she unwrapped the tape she had put on her hands for the session.

"Do you think he's gonna work here?" Barton downed a bottle of water just as she had.

She shrugged her shoulders, looking at the two men's body language. "From the legend that we all know, he probably would," she responded. There was a Captain America exhibit, just downtown, painting a clear picture of who and how he was. Howard Stark had insisted on it, and Margaret Carter spearheaded the production, to make sure that everything was correct. It outlined every part of the soldier's life, how driven and motivated he was. It talked about his insurmountable willpower, which is difficult to believe for anyone who didn't know him. Natasha was skeptical of that, considering that she's never met anyone like how Agent Carter paints him to be; not in her six years at S.H.I. . and not ever before that. She's met selfless people, sure. She knows Clint would die for her in a heartbeat, but they were only selfless for causes that only concerned them. Soldiers will die for their people, but not really anyone else. He was just a typical American soldier to the agent, but Carter explains how freakishly different he was from the rest.

Natasha felt that the woman's biases clouded the way she saw the Man out of Time. Special people exist, but not in the way the legend of Captain America exists.

Then the men left the viewing room and appeared in the same place they were in. She had just finished unwrapping her hands when Clint spoke. She was facing her back to them. "Fury," Barton said. Natasha turned, drinking more water.

"Agent Barton," the man with the eyepatch said. He turned to the woman. "Romanoff." She responded accordingly with a nod. "I want you to meet Steve Rogers."

Natasha knew that the little kid jumped out of Hawkeye, but he wouldn't admit it. He was no more of a fanboy than Agent Coulson, but he definitely could be. "Clint Barton," he said as he walked over to shake the soldiers hand. "Nice to meet ya, Cap—can I call you that?" The agent stammered and Rogers laughed. The woman couldn't help but roll her eyes as she approached right behind him.

"Agent Natasha Romanoff," she said, not letting a hand out because that's not how she is. She nods and…that's about it, just nods.

"Nice to meet you, ma'am," he said, smiling at her and keeping his distance.

"Just Agent Romanoff is fine," she said, her inner-self wincing at the "ma'am".

"Steve," he said. He noticed the other agent keep composure, but his energy tells him that he's extremely excited to see the man. It made the captain smile a little bit. The woman, however, was stoic in nature. Not emotionless, but very affectless. She was all business, it seems.

"He'll be joining us for a few training sessions, the way we handle recruits," said Fury, "just so he can get a sense of what it's like before making up his mind."

Steve and the director had come to an agreement that he would feel out how it is to be a part of the organization before completely making up his mind on if he wanted to join or not. Steve knew that it was definitely a special case, because Fury had said that the interest to join the group is incredibly high. Anyone would give a limb to be here. The director knew that he was deserving of this special case anyway, because he isn't like everyone else and any other government organization would try to recruit him in a heartbeat. The director was going with his needs in order to acquaint him into S.H.I.E.L.D. as best as he could. He was an asset that he needed. The Captain's lack of ego, however, prevents him from seeing this circumstance that way. He just wanted to see what kind of life he would be living if he did take this. It's more about feeling out how Peggy and Howie's organization was doing and how he can accustom himself to this without jumping in too quickly. It's not like he was looking at other opportunities, because his naïveté and his humility prevents him from thinking about this in that way. He's looking at what this place is supposed to be doing for the world, not what it's going to do for him.

"It's just going to be for a few weeks," the soldier said. He's sure that the two highest-skilled agents wouldn't be the ones babysitting for him, but to his surprise, he finds that Barton will be the one showing him the reigns.

"I might be stepping down because of my family," said the archer. "Maybe get a desk job, or one that provides more safety."

It was something the soldier understood. He had seen that in his future with Peggy, the only kind of selfishness anyone could picture him undertaking. It wasn't in the books now, though. With his past week of pondering and thinking about his new life, he had come to a conclusion that this was a second chance of him being a soldier. He had considered his first life to be where, teleologically, it would have ended with a family, maybe a couple of sons and daughters. He felt that this time was supposed to be lived completely in duty. He was prepared to give his life to defeat world threats the first time, with the expectation that he gets a dance afterwards. This time it would be different. This time would be for the people.

Training happened three times a day, except he wasn't with everyone. Apparently his enhancements would make it unfair, which he understood. Clint Barton told him everything that would happen in that training, though, and they both replicated it in their own way. Cap would spar with Clint two of those three times a day and he's won every single time. It's been a week now and Natasha has never seen her partner so frustrated. The other time of training, he would be by himself killing some punching bags that Clint is forced to write off for the budget to Fury. "You're costing us money, you know," the agent said through the microphone inside the glass partition as Steve tears open a third bag. He laughed slightly and mouthed "sorry".

The captain was very amused at the kind of strength Clint Barton held. He was extremely well-versed in his fighting, it was almost insane. The only way Steve ever beats him is through his strength and agility. He was also a little bit smarter than the archer, so he trumps him in combat. His aim though, Steve marvels at.

"Why don't you use guns?" The soldier yells as he loads a Glock.

"I guess I'm just more primitive," the other laughs, tearing an arrow in half for the fourth bullseye in a row.

"You're costing us money, you know," Steve echoes. The archer smiles at the humor, the only one he's exhibited in the two weeks he's been alive.

Natasha watched the two from afar. Barton had expressed to her how he wanted to retire from the field and, despite her disappointment, saw just how happy he was working with the soldier. He grabs her guns and takes an open space, firing one shot into the chest of the target silhouette. She fires the remaining rounds all in the same hole. Steve was astonished. The pair were incredible marksmen.

"It's nice to know we trump the super soldier at something," said Barton as he took his headphones off.

The soldier laughed. With humility, he refrains from saying how good he was at throwing things. The accuracy is unmatched, on par with their shooting skills. "That's nice to know, too," he replied. "She doesn't talk much, huh?"

They walked out of the shooting range and back into the building. The captain had clearance to go literally anywhere now, but he was still a little bit overwhelmed at leaving the compound. Clint nods at his statement. "Nat is…_Nat_."

The soldier didn't really understand what that meant.

"It means," the other started as if reading his mind, "she's very much kept to herself. I know as much about her as you do."

"But I heard you all have been working for six years," the soldier explained, recalling to their banter when the were sparring.

"Exactly." They reached the line for food at the cafeteria. "The only things I know about her are the things that happen when we're on missions together. I've never gotten a glimpse of what her past looks like. I mean I know what it _may_ have looked like, but eh's never told me how it felt."

"Not even where she's from?"

"I don't wanna speak for her, but everyone here knows she's from Russia," said Barton as he set his food down and the other sat across from him. "She's probably the greatest assassin this world's ever seen." And Clint continues to explain how he was sent in to terminate her. That was all that he and everyone else in the compound knew.

To summarize: She was an assassin for the KGB, so good that she was labeled a threat to world order and someone had to be sent to eliminate her. The archer saw something in her that forced him to send her back alive. S.H.I.E.L.D. had to isolate her for a few months, almost a year, to really conceptualize what she was. No one knew what happened behind the scenes. All that Clint knew was that she came back to headquarters and was sequestered here for awhile, just like Steve, and he was put on the look out for her. They worked so well together that Fury gave her his stamp of approval and him, a new partner.

"I was known for working alone," Barton said as he devoured a burger. "I was kind of upset when he said I needed to tail her for this amount of time." He paused. "And then we were sent to Budapest, my first time working with an actual partner. It went so well, I had never seen Eyepatch so excited during our briefing." Steve laughed at the moniker. "Then someone called us STRIKE Team: Delta, and then six years later, Maria Hill says we're probably the greatest agents Shield's ever seen behind Fury. Not to brag, though," Clint said with a laugh.

"Fury's really that good?"

Clint lit up. "Oh, _yeah_," he said with his eyes lighting up. "There are so many stories around him." And he left it at that.

Natasha was back on the training floor. She hasn't trained with Clint much because of his babysitting responsibilities, so she's put herself on the simulator. The setting was at its max, where the computer wins practically at anything. She's yet to tally a win against it and with the history of its installment, no one actually has. There hasn't been many fights in her life that she's lost, other than when she fell against Barton, which is a loss she's happy about because it led her here.

The simulator went on. The reason why it was so difficult is because it was personal. Every single agent or person in the building has their dossier in the system, allowing the computer to adapt to the most physically demanding of characters. It's also geared to fight with psychological tactics, being able to access the mind of its user, and it creates infinite scenarios that make it impossible to face the same thing and situation more than once. That's why no one's been able to beat it. It's everyone's worst nightmare come to life.

She enters the training room, aware of the false reality. The hard part is the fact that everything looks so real. Someone jumps from beneath her, strangling her but she was able to get through that quickly. A few more people get in her way which she was able to get by harmless.

And then she enters a place she's never been to before. It looks familiar, though. Rooms of glass windows. She was walking on a hallway with no end. Every time she looked inside the window, it was a girl shooting a man in the head. And it happened over and over. The same girl and the same man. He was tied to a chair, sack over his head, beaten up. The woman pulls the trigger, emotionless, and the bullet enters his forehead through the impeding fabric. Bullseye. Natasha didn't know what she was supposed to do until someone comes out and punches her. And then she brought a full-on fight with someone she didn't know. He had a mask on and so she punched it off, revealing a man she never knew but looked eerily familiar. The fight continued, and the hallway was moving as if she were on a travelator (like the ones in airports). The scenery passes by her, but the clips were the same. A girl shooting, and now voices echoed as a woman comes to collect the girl. People were removing the body in order to put another one on the chair. A living one. "You know what to do, Natasha." The woman said, and now the spy was distracted. The girl walked in front of the man, opens his mouth and places the barrel in it. He pleads and cries. And then there was a shot. Emotionless. Blood splatters on the girl, but she doesn't even blink.

Natasha gets punched again, by the same man. "You don't remember me?" Said the man with a distinct Russian accent, laughing through his teeth with a smug grin. Natasha continues to fight him, but it seemed that she was losing despite her being the only one to land punches. He was laughing through it all. It was a nightmare. And the scene of the little girl, named after her, putting the gun in a man's mouth, shooting him dead, played in the background.

Natasha gets knead in the stomach and she has to grab onto her abdomen despite it not hurting that bad. She gets hit in the face three times. The man is on top of her, laughing and launching throws as if she were a punching bag. The simulation hurts her, though it won't leave any bruises. She tries to get out, but the scene before her, the girl shooting someone in the mouth continues, and she kept her full attention on the distraction despite the man landing blows. All she has to say is "withdraw" and everything around her disappears. And so she does. She tries to get up, but falls to her knees. A tear falls, one she didn't even know was there.

She stood after a minute of sulking. _A tear shed is an exertion of energy that could be used toward something else._ She thought. It came from the Red Room as a way for their masters to control their crying. She didn't cry once in the many years she was there. She doesn't really remember how many years.

The simulation opened thoughts that she didn't even know were there. She couldn't remember any of them, even her younger self. She doesn't know the man she fought, even though in the back of her mind she does, considering that the simulation gathers from the user. It was vexing. She had been through the simulation before, uprooting people from her past, different ones every time. The hard truth is that she was never able to recover them. She sees them once in the simulation, is perplexed with their existence, and once it ends, there's always an itch in her mind. She cannot ever pinpoint it, to the point that after her fifth time undergoing the training, she just surrenders the fact that she will never know. She's let it go.

This one hit hard, though. She left the facility on her motorcycle and can't help but wonder about her past, the first time she's ever sulked her lost former life in years.

Steve watched the fallen spy. He doesn't know what happened. Spectators can't see what the user is fighting unless it's activated. He remembered when Peggy told him that he didn't know women. It's been seventy years and he's aware that he's still not, given that those seventy years were spent with no social interaction. He looked on with agony and decided to leave before she stood up, knowing that the woman probably wouldn't have been okay with him seeing her vulnerable.

He went back to his room and pondered the woman, how similar they were. He thinks of the fact that there is no one for either of them in this age. Clint says that she was looking for a purpose and hopes that she found it here. Steve isn't sure if _he's_ found it here.

She wonders if she'll be okay. But, like any strong woman he knew, from his mother to Peggy Carter, he understands that they're always okay.


	4. Audition

Cross my heart, hope to die, I really don't own Marvel.

* * *

She's yet to talk to him. It's been another week and aside from their introductions two weeks prior, she hasn't spoken to the soldier. He hasn't either.

Natasha was walking through the halls to get to a meeting room. When she entered she saw the soldier in one chair, Fury in another, and Tony Stark.

"I want my suits back," Stark said directly to her. She didn't respond, taking a seat next to the captain instead.

"We weren't the ones that took them," said the director.

Stark fumbles with his chin, then leaning back on the chair he says, "Well I'm sure she was present when she was making punching bags out of the security."

"It was merely for clandestine purposes," the woman said with a grin. "Wouldn't wanna crash your party."

The billionaire clicked his tongue and huffed in disbelief. "We needed those files so the government wouldn't take them. They were for your safety."

"I'm going to give it to them," he responded.

"And they will confiscate them," said the redhead.

"As opposed to what you're currently doing." The engineer said with sarcasm, growing irritated.

Natasha eyes Fury before sighing. "If we didn't take those files, you wouldn't have the ability to _keep_ your suits. The Defense isn't too happy that you made them."

"What are you doing with them? You're the government, too."

"Not exactly," Fury said, standing up. "I'm working on an initiative that will allow you to keep them. You can privatize it. We're the government, but we're more special than that," the director said with an all-knowing smirk.

His pitch caused the billionaire to sit back on the chair. Tony was thinking about it. "And what's the catch?"

"You have to fight," Fury said. Natasha was confused now. She hadn't known the extent that this mission led to. She wasn't sure of the whole purpose.

"You want me"-Stark pointed at himself-"to fight for you?"

"No," the director commanded attention. "For everyone."

Natasha looked at him, now lost.

"You can continue doing your own thing, or, like a soldier, use your suit for good," Nick Fury was compelling.

"Can I sleep on it?" Tony said, his humor a mechanism to his confusion; not something he felt very often. The man with the eyepatch nodded. "Also, what's he doing here?" He pointed at the soldier.

"Steve Rogers," said the man as he put out his hand.

"As in the dead guy from 1945?" Tony shook his hand, perplexed. It sounded rude, but Steve understood.

"Yep, that's me," he smiled. "I'm not part of the meeting, just wanted to meet you." The engineer nodded, still confused and Steve could sense it. "I was good friends with your father, that's why." Tony froze, suddenly interested.

"I know you were. I didn't hear the end of it. He wasn't a great father, so I don't really know how much better of a friend he was," Tony dodged the conversation, striking a kind of pain within the soldier. "And if you'll excuse me, robot thieves, I will consider your proposal. I'll find my way out." He left the room eerie.

"I thought he'd like that I brought it up," Steve said apologetically.

Fury walked by him, tapping his back, "People are different." And he left.

"He's a character," said the woman in the room. She was still in her seat.

"A good one?" The Captain asked.

"I don't know. Deep down, probably. Pretty rude on the outside, though," she stood and went to walk away but the soldier didn't take that as the end of the conversation. He walked beside her.

"His father had the same kind of pride," Steve said. Natasha sensed that this was more than small talk, so she continues.

"What was he like?"

"Definitely a good one, deep down and in the shallows," he continued. "He made this place, so I think we can all agree."

The spy stopped in her tracks. "Have you made up your mind about S.H.I.E.L.D. then?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Everyone I've encountered says the same thing. It's all a mission fighting for the better."

"They're right," she crossed her arms on her chest and leaned on a banister. They were in a place where if she fell backwards she'd land on the floor underneath them.

"I can just go back to the army," said Steve, leaning on the wall across from where she was.

"Are you looking for a war?"

"It's kind of all I've ever known. It's what I am."

"I don't think that's true," she said, sympathizing and uncrossing her arms, leaning them on the banister instead. "There's more to you than what your past tells you."

"But you all fight wars, don't you?"

"No," she sighs. "We prevent them from happening in the first place." He nods in accordance, still unsure about what to think. She starts walking again and she gestures for him to come with her. "It's counter-terrorism. We're made for national _and _global security."

"Yeah, I know. You're just echoing Fury."

"Because it's true," she said. Natasha enters. "I don't really think you understand the magnitude of what we do here." They entered the elevator.

"I guess not," he said. "Threats are everywhere. I woke up seventy years into the future, I don't really know if I'm supposed to trust anything."

She nodded. "Loyalty's kind of a big thing here." The elevator dinged and the doors open to rows and rows of computers with people wearing something around their head. They were speaking into it and Rogers thinks that they can hear through it as well. "People measure threats from everywhere." In the middle of the floor was a globe of the world. He couldn't even fathom that the technology exists. It was turning on its axis and he can see through it. "It's called a hologram," the spy said, noticing his curiosity. "But you can also touch it," she said as she hit the Middle East. There were red and blue spots everywhere. It reminded Steve of the missions he had during the war. They used maps and red pins instead. _I guess this works, too_. He thought to himself. "The red are deemed hostiles or questionable people. The blue are friendlies and clandestine stations."

"What do you do with the red?"

"Nothing. We just monitor them until they do something," she said, zooming out and returning it to the globe it initially was. Steve looked around at the people in their desks, working on their computers. It was astonishing just how quickly the world had moved past him. "This is the communications floor. A lot of our intel can be found through here. They work like partners, where one person could be here and another in Berlin. Those agents report to each other, and the one who receives information here inputs it into the system."

"What kind of things are they looking for?"

"Everything," said the spy as she gleamed at Steve. He was taking in the whole place, looking at every screen and every corner of the room. "I specialize in espionage. Fury did, too. And Clint," she smiles, "Well, he's a great shot. Great at shooting _and_ calling the shots."

"His combat skills are pretty above average, too, if I may understate," the soldier said that got a laugh out of the woman.

"Yes, they are," she said. "There are many other people who do other things. They can specialize in intelligence and work down here. But we also have pilots, snipers, tacticians, logistics, you name it." Steve was silent, taking in everything he can see. "We're soldiers, too, Steve," she said faintly.

He nodded. "I know," he said. "But soldiers are pawns to a bigger game. You follow every command, you respect authority, without knowing which side is the correct one."

"And that's why we have these people to figure out what side we're on," she said, standing next to him. "Every single person in this room is given every single side to every single story that comes in."

"But do you understand my wariness?"

"Completely," she said with a smile. "That's why you're given time to figure it out." They walked back to the elevator.

"Sometimes I wonder if I can just live in a ranch, milk my own cows, sit on the couch and just live a normal life," he said. Natasha chuckled at the thought.

"Even you know you can't do that."

"How so?"

"Because you're Captain America," she said. "Everyone knows your story, your legacy. Your willpower is beyond human and you can't go to sleep knowing people are in danger and you aren't doing anything about it. That's not who you are."

He looks at the floor. It's not that she was wrong. "I'm surprised you know so much."

"Peggy Carter did so much to keep your name alive," she said. "This whole organization is named after you."

He perked at the sound of her. "She really did."

It was all the words they spoke to each other when alarms started ringing in the compound. The woman in front of him turned into a whole different being. She looked like she was all business, the same demeanor when he had met her. Red lights were ringing everywhere as the elevator door opened. She clicked something in her ear. "What's going on?" She said aloud. Steve didn't hear the conversation that was happening. "How? All systems were secure, we were just up there." Natasha started running, so Steve followed, listening for the clues she's spitting out loud. The woman unhitched a gun and tossed it behind her, Steve caught it. "I'm with Steve, we'll find them." She faced him. "There's a breach in the compound. They're infiltrating all floors and something tells me they're looking for something." He nodded. They were back on the training floor, the floor he knew all too well because he's been sequestered there ever since he awoke.

"I'll take right, you take left. There's only four exits in this place and if they're in here, we can lock them in a corner. If they're not, we have advantage at targeting them," he said.

The redhead nodded at his orders. "Really sorry you don't have a shield right now." He just shrugged it off and they parted, their feet barely making noise as they hit the floor.

Steve has his gun up, alert. _Man, I really miss that shield._ He reaches a corner, facing his back against it and turning to see if a hostile was there. Negative. The friendlies had followed protocol to evacuate the floor when the noise sounded, so there was no one else there except for the agent and the soldier. The elevator stopped too late, not giving them a chance to leave, the hostiles were already on their way. And then he heard a door open, footfalls resounded and Russian echoed. Thank the heavens he knew how to speak that.

_"Find her," _a man with a deep voice said. He got confused. The soldier understood, but didn't really know what it meant. _"We don't want anymore widows walking around."_ Steve, still not understanding what that meant, turned the corner, counting the hostiles while covering himself. There were ten. _Could really use that shield now, _he said to himself. They were in suits, looking very important. Steve didn't have a comm to tell Natasha that he had found them. She was probably still circling the corner, he assumed, so he decided to do it himself. The man who was talking was tall and strong. He wasn't holding a weapon, but the nine others had large armaments. Steve calculated his next move, and when one hostile took a step, he rounded the corner and fired one bullet, straight into his throat.

_"Kill him_" he heard the man say in Russian. Rounds were being fired his way but he took cover around the corner. He ran inside one of the training rooms, hiding behind a post for cover.

"Come out!" Said a hostile with a hard accent. Steve hears only two sets of footsteps. He rolls out, taking cover behind the scaffold of the training platform. The two guys fired rounds aimlessly. And he heard one of them climb up on the platform, walking his way as he's cornered by the other. In an instant, he twists the man's wrist from above him, disarming him. This caused the other suit to fire his direction and Steve used his captive as a shield, resulted in the suit killing his teammate. He rolls off the platform and fires a bullet straight into the man's temple. Steve takes a gun and hitches the Glock Natasha had given him in the back of his pants. He'd only fired two shots anyway, but _we're still saving ammo here._

By his calculations, Natasha had seven hostiles waiting for her outside. He hurries and was met with someone waiting by the door. He quickly drops his now very large weapon and averts the barrel that the hostile was facing towards him. He gets a punch in the stomach, and gets kneed in the face when he crouches. Shots were fired from a different direction, hitting him in the shoulder. He groans and uses the unconscious man as a shield again. _Really, really miss my shield._ And then throws the now very dead hostile on top of the other. He was met with a kick in the face when he tries to get up. _Five more. _

He rounds the corner and sees the very capable Agent Romanoff striking a suit. She holds his neck between her legs, spins, and throws him on the floor. He was met with a zap to the face from her wrists. Steve didn't know what it was but he was definitely surprised by it.

Steve counts four on the ground, all taken by the spy. "There's one more," he said. But then a set of footsteps were heard through one of the exits. "Nevermind."

"There's only two of us, Steve. I know we can handle a lot, but that's a lot," Natasha said, hitching her gun. "We have to move."

"But what about everyone else?"

"Everyone from the floors above us have evacuated."

"How?" They were running now, trying to get to one of the four exits that Natasha knew none of the hostiles would be going through.

"There's an exit that leads to one of the basements. Clint says they entered through the front, so they don't have eyes on that one. That's the evacuation protocol." They heard gunshots being fired through the hallway and Natasha turns, jumping on Steve as he continues to run. She was poised like a backpack worn on the front. She was faced the opposite, essentially riding the soldier as she shoots the hostiles behind them. Steve, still running, slides his arm back and takes the gun hitched behind him and throws it up for Natasha to catch. She takes it and easily shoots the four hostiles on their tail. After eliminating them, she hitches the gun back where it had been in his pants, jumps down from him, and runs beside him again. "That's the one," she said as he kicks the door open to a room of stairs.

_"Target acquired", _they both hear someone say in Russian a few floors above where they came from.

"What does that even mean?" The soldier says.

"He said 'target acquired'."

"I know, but what does it mean?"

"You speak Russian?" The woman asked. They both hear the deployment of some sort of large gun. An explosive landed just behind them, sending both in the air. Steve was able to hold onto the railing, and ended up catching Natasha in the process, groaning as the strain of the shoulder wound pains him. While in the air, the spy catches a glimpse of the hostile and shoots at him, four flights down, bullseye to the forehead. He swings her to the next of the lower flights of stairs and he jumps down with her.

"Yeah, among others," he says, continuing their conversation like nothing had happened.

"Good I can talk crap to you about Clint when he's around," she jokes, hearing Clint yell over the intercom in her ear.

They reach one of the basements and Natasha opens up the door, only to be met with more people. "Oh, shit."

"I thought you said this was concealed."

"It's supposed to be," she says. She fired three shots, each to the head of a few of the perpetrators. Steve gets shot again, a through-and-through on his side. He grunts in pain, but continues running. He grabs a metal panel, using it as a shield. _This will do, I guess._ Shots were being fired as he ran towards the hostiles, running them over and knocking them to unconsciousness with four hits. He hears the spy groan, a shot made it in her thigh. He counts four more hostiles, all moving towards Natasha. The soldier wields the makeshift shield at all four of them, knocking three down, enough for the spy to shoot the standing one. Steve takes one of the ones on the ground and Natasha takes two.

The one Steve was against was a surprisingly good combatant, matching him almost. He realizes that he was the man giving orders, the one who didn't have a weapon. He had a distinct mustache and his physique peered through the suit. A shot was fired and another groan left the spy. This one was through the forearm. Steve landed enough punches to send the big man in a stun, buying himself time so he can take out the one man Natasha had left. He was a hard one, too, also almost matching him.

The spy stands to shoot the big man Steve had left, but she froze. Steve knocked his guy unconscious, after a fight that took longer than he expected, and when he turned, he saw that Natasha wasn't moving. The man was giving her a smug grin. "Do you remember me?" He looked exactly like the man from the simulation. He sounded exactly like him, too.

In a swift move, Steve unhitches the gun he had in the back of his pants and fires two shots into the man's chest, grabbing the spy afterwards. "What was that?" He asked. She didn't say anything and kept running with him.

"Open garage," Natasha says out loud, triggering the gates open. Steve hopped on a motorcycle and Natasha jumped behind him. They heard more shots firing behind them and Steve pushed the bike to its max, leaving the compound for the first time. He didn't know where to go, but he knew that wherever it was, it's supposed to be as far from there as possible.

* * *

"You wanna tell me what that was about?" Steve asked. Both the soldier and the spy made it to the safe house just outside the city, with a few other agents.

"I don't know why the compound was attacked," she said, wincing as she wrapped her hand where a bullet had pierced her. Steve has his shoulder and side bandaged a few hours earlier, the moment they reached the house. The two were sitting around a campfire a few feet outside.

"You know that's not what I'm talking about," he said. She grew silent, fidgeting with the bandage on her thigh. "You don't have to tell me, but it could've jeopardized your safety and mine."

"I know" was all she said. Steve got up, leaving her around the campfire.

She couldn't pinpoint who he was. She didn't know him and she doesn't know why. The spy wanted to stand and blow off some steam but the thigh wound wouldn't allow her. Steve returned with a glass of water for the both of them.

"So," she started before downing the glass. "You joining us now, or what? That was some audition."

He laughed, sipping his water. "We'll see after this mission."

"I don't even know what kind of mission this is."

"How did they even get through security?"

Natasha sighed. "They killed everyone down there," she said with sadness. "I knew all of them."

"Were you all close?"

"Nah," she resigned. She wasn't close with anyone. The only deaths that she could be bothered with were Clint's and his family, and they're all still alive. "Still sad, though." She sympathizes, but that's all that she allows herself to do.

They sit in silence for awhile until the man speaks. "I really miss my shield," the captain said, getting a laugh from the redhead.

"We'll make you one if you join," she humors.

"I just might, then," he replies with a smile.

"And I actually don't know him," she said, switching the conversation back to where it had been before. He looks at her with confusion. "I froze because I thought he was familiar." And she proceeded to tell him about the simulator in the training room. She omitted just about everything except for that fact that the man was in there and she didn't know who he was. "It caught me off-guard. Not a lot of things do, but this one did." The soldier thinks back to when he saw the spy kneeling on the ground, exhausted and distressed.

Natasha winces as she stands up. The gentleman in Steve wanted to help her, but knew that she'd probably smack him if he tried. She took notice and it made her smile. She limps inside the house and Steve sets the fire out. There were agents laid out on makeshift beds and cots. The two saw that a couple of beds were vacant so they took those, next to each other. Steve really wished he could put a shirt on but he was too tired to lift an arm up. The bed was chilly and he couldn't really sleep on his favorite side. He was forced to sleep on the other, facing Natasha. She, on the other hand, had to choose between her forearm and her thigh. Or she could sleep on her back, but she hates that. She eventually chooses to sleep on her stomach so both wounds are accommodated for. Her head was facing Steve.

"He said something about eliminating 'widows'," the soldier said faintly.

Natasha's eyes opened, not completely surprised though. "I had an idea."

"What does that mean?"

"You ask that a lot."

"I don't know a lot."

She let out a laugh. "I'm a Black Widow. That's my codename." Steve grew weary. "They're coming after me." She closed her eyes as if that thought didn't trigger anxiety at all.

The sleeping conditions were definitely a factor, but those weren't the reasons that made it harder for the soldier to sleep.


	5. Statue of David

I need not remind you of my broke self with having to say that I don't have rights to Marvel.

* * *

The soldier was the first to wake up of all the agents left in the room. There were actually very few left because Fury had given them assignments regarding the attack. He gets up to grab a glass of water and an MRE, like how it was back in the old days. His wounds don't hurt as much anymore so his wincing was limited.

Natasha woke up groggier than usual. The pain showed physically on her face as she tries to stand from the bed on the floor. She leans on a nearby table for support and so she could put the wounded leg at ease.

"There isn't much," the soldier said, handing her an apple. "Or do you want chicken chunks?" He asked, facing the bag to her. She looked on with disgust and declined both of his offers, grabbing a glass of water instead. He chews a piece of chicken and stares at her, like waiting for her to start conversation.

"What?"

He shook his head. _Nothing, I guess, _he thinks, a little indifferent about the way that she's dodging the fact that there's a bounty on her. He's learned that there's a lot to chisel through the woman before knowing anything about her. Instead of pushing for her insight, he remains silent, letting her control the personal conversations. Fury was aware that she was the target now. They ended up rummaging through S.H.I.E.L.D. like the compound wasn't equipped with the greatest agents in the world. Steve seemed vey surprised by it, but Natasha? Not so much.

She isn't entirely knowing about how it happened, though. The spy could fathom why they basically ran over the whole facility, but didn't really understand how. Natasha doesn't know how they exist, whoever they were. The Black Widow Ops was disbanded after she had left and the Soviet Union fell. S.H.I.E.L.D. itself made sure that the whole entire program was erased, only their organization has the facts on the case, and even then, they destroyed all the serums, the biochemical enhancements and psychotechnic projects. She is one hundred percent sure she's the last one. Every single person associated with the Red Room Academy (not just the Black Widow Ops) was assassinated by Clint Barton and Agent Daisy Johnson, and her respective troops. She was held by S.H.I.E.L.D. at the time, spending almost a year isolated from the rest of the people as everything was going on. Clint made sure to visit her as much as he could so she knew that the past was behind her, reassuring her that the whole organization was disbanded, the Soviet Union had fallen and the KGB dissolved.

Fury's organization had a list of people to eliminate. Fury created his own kill list, and every single day the spy saw one man terminated after the other, red strikethroughs on the names of doctors, scientists, politicians, influencers, lawyers, military-men, and their families. The director mercilessly killed everyone and made sure that everything died with them. Natasha, still a cold-hearted assassin at the time, remained unmoved, apathetic and the least bit concerned. It wasn't until a year later that relief started to wash over her, thankful that the director called the shots that he did.

And that's why this was confusing. She didn't care why they attacked, it just didn't make sense how they were able to do it so easily. Evacuation protocol wouldn't have been called if intruders weren't seen as a threat. Fury saw them as a threat. The only people that could do that, in all of Natasha's life, were the Red Room Academy. She's fought a lot of the toughest assassins. She _is_ one. So, connecting the dots and everything else she knew about the hardest villains she's ever faced, the clues aligned. They fought like Red Room children, they weren't better than the assassin, but they were definitely better than the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and to have harnessed those kinds of fighters in one club was unheard of. Their government organization had the occasional Jessica Drew, Tony Masters, and Nick Fury, but they were special assets. To have incredibly skilled fighters, to multiply the likes of Nick Fury and Natasha Romanoff all in one place was very unlikely. They either recruit really well or raise them that way. Probably_ the latter._

So Natasha wondered. Her past managed to catch up to her. She wasn't afraid, just annoyed.

"Here." She dropped a small black piece in front of the soldier. He was devouring the rest of the packet when his eyes settled on what looked like an earpiece.

"What is that?" He asked, his voice muffled. The chicken was still making its way through his throat.

"It's a wireless intercom," she said, putting her own in her ear. She grabs a _spray can? _of some sort. The gauze on her thigh was worn and after cleaning the wound, she sprays something on it, chemicals unknown to Steve. "Antibiotics," said Natasha, knowing that the soldier had questions. "There's zinc in it, too. It helps wounds heal faster." He stared at the gun shot wound on her thigh and then opened the patch that covered his side, they looked the same. It confused him even more considering that the quick regeneration of his body allows for his wounds to close faster. Hers looked the exact same. "Here's some for yours," she said. The spy knew about his healing power, but he didn't know about hers. It confused him even more considering that the quick regeneration of his body allows for his wounds to close faster. Hers looked the exact same and that shouldn't be for a normal human. "Here's some for you, even though you have healing power and all," she said with a half smile. The man nodded and took it for his side and shoulder.

She grabbed a new pair of cargo pants for the soldier and for herself. She tossed a shirt for him as well. The spy walked around the table to grab something behind Steve and the man, no matter how much he tried to control it, looked at the woman wearing only a sports bra. It was something that isn't completely difficult for him to control considering that he grew up in the 30s and the norms were different then. But a woman with a physique of a fighter, undressed in front of him, it wasn't as easy as it could have been back in the 30s. He averted his eye quick enough so that the spy didn't recognize. He's sure she gets it a lot so she may have noticed.

She didn't, though.

"Are you going to eat something?" He asked, finishing the terrible chicken. He heard a faint "mhm" as the woman jumped on top of the table he was eating on to reach something above the closet that held all the food. After awhile of ruckus, she came back down with a spoon in her mouth and a can of soup in her hand.

"The nonperishables are as disgusting as they come, but this has never failed me," she said, making the soldier chuckle.

"What do we do now?" He asked, clipping the intercom in his ear. He grabbed his shirt with one arm, putting his head through the hole and his arm in another, but unable to put his injured limb through the other. The woman, who was currently putting the soup in a disposable bowl, stopped what she was doing to help the soldier. He winced at her touch, not from pain but surprise. She retracted her hand, but he nodded, letting her know that it was okay.

Soft fingers trailed his forearm. Another hand rested on the back of his shoulders, giving him support so he could softly move his whole arm forward. She held onto his large wrist to keep everything steady and grabbed the remaining hole of his shirt. The hand on his wrist moved back up to his forearm to stabilize his elbow bending at the joint, allowing him to put half of his arm through the hole. She grabbed the shirt to push it up to his shoulder. She went the extra mile, setting his shirt down, her fingers touching his torso. Steve remained frozen, allowing her.

It was in slow motion, like someone admiring the statue of David. Natasha's mind was racing, probably as fast as Steve's. Her knuckles grazed over his pecs, and like a washboard, felt her fingers move through the crevasses of his stomach, dancing through its many hills before the shirt reached its end. There may have been a certain disappointment that it finished too soon, but Natasha is too strong-willed to admit that to herself. Steve has already admitted it to himself, though, but he shook it off. He felt a little distressed, knowing that what happened wasn't necessary, but he couldn't really take it back. He froze too soon, making it difficult for him to protest. Next thing he knew, the woman was out of his sight, back to her bowl of soup.

"We just wait for Fury's orders," she replied to his most recent question. He couldn't even let out a "thank you" from his lips for helping him with his shirt, but Natasha didn't need it. _It's my pleasure._ She thought before rolling her eyes in her head and forgetting the intimate connection they just shared. That's not how she pictured this morning to be going.

He stared at the empty bag of MRE, afraid to look at her direction because of the fact that she still didn't have a shirt on. She sat across from him on the circular table, and set a bag on top of it. After she reached the end of her bowl, she grabbed Steve's MRE packet, which he seemed to zone out on and threw everything in the waste. She started grabbing gadgets out of the bag and setting them in front of him. _Thank god she put a shirt on, _he told himself. She had a black jacket on top of that, too. He felt more comfortable with himself about that.

"What are those?"

"You ask a lot of questions, Captain," she said, loading her four guns.

"I've been asleep for awhile," that got a laugh out of the redhead.

"These are weapons, Steve," she said, a little patronizingly, not feeding the soldier's curiosity.

"I'm aware."

She grabbed what looked like a concealed carry holster. It was like a backpack without the backpack, just a vest system but there was only one clasp on the front. She grabbed two batons, activated them, resulting in a shock of electric current that caught the soldier off-guard, even though he didn't flinch. The spy put the two batons together to create a staff, wielded it around to see if it worked, then broke it in half again. She set it on her back, which explains the vest system thing. It was made to carry her weapons like what Steve used when hitching his shield to his back. She put two black things that looked like guns behind her. "Grappling hook guns that electrocute," she said, knowing he would have asked.

A belt system also made its way out of the bag. It looked lightweight, like not much can be carried in its two compartments. Their sizes were that of an iPhone, Steve realized. Barton had shown him what those were. He didn't know what she could fit in those. He noticed a symbol on the belt that he remembered from when they first met. It was the same symbol on her shirt during his sparring session with Clint. She put two guns on the holsters that the belt provided. The widow took two straps of attachments and wrapped them around her thigh. They were compartments for her two additional guns.

Lastly, she took out cuffs that looked like a small barrel of a small machine gun to Steve. She activated those and they delivered the same electrostatic shock that her batons did. The soldier was impressed.

"That's for zapping," she said with humor.

"I saw you use it on that one guy back at the compound," he said as the woman nodded. She grabbed another black duffel bag and set it in front of the soldier.

"Courtesy of Clint," she said. "I asked him to have this ready for us when we got here last night."

He unzipped the bag. "Where is he?"

"With his family," the widow took a seat. "He said that Fury's keeping him out of the loop for this one because he can be a target. He told me that he was made during his missions to assassinate people from the KGB. They'd come after him, too."

Steve nodded in understanding. "What about you?"

She huffed. "I'm not sitting when I'm the one they're trying to kill. It's different. They're already after me. I don't need them after him."

Steve remained silent in agreement. He wasn't planning to change her mind, just curious about why she's not laying low. Steve grabbed a black leather jacket in the bag, something tells him that it was Clint's. A belt full of holsters were in there, too, just like Natasha's. Four guns came out of the bag to fill them. There were only two things left in the bag and they were black bracelets. He didn't know what they were, but wore them on the wrists of the jacket The bracelets had an extension that rested on his palm, and it had a button on it. He looked at Natasha.

"Go ahead, click it," she said with a tinge of excitement in her voice. "Fury made them for you because he felt bad he couldn't find your shield."

He clicked both buttons and triangular shields formed on the back of his forearm. They looked like they could stab and cut anyone who neared them. He smiled. Natasha didn't know if that's how he showed excitement but she knew that the captain wasn't super emotive.

"Now that's more like it," he said, clicking the button again to make them disappear. He looked at the woman in front of him. "What's the mission?"

"Still waiting," she said, taking out her S.H.I.E.L.D. issued phone. She set it on the table and with one click, a hologram popped up just like the one Steve had seen in the compound. There was already a compilation of the perpetrators, their silhouettes showing up in three dimension, as well as their characteristics and status. Natasha swiped through all the men they had killed, all faceless because they were wearing masks, except for one. The spy stared at his profile, trying to remember his face from her past. She couldn't find him.

Steve stared at him, too, only to see what he went up against. The man was six-foot-six and three hundred pounds of pure muscle. The man didn't appear to be enhanced, but he sure was strong. His fighting was impeccable. The three-dimensional figure was spinning slowly and Steve couldn't help but notice Natasha stare at it intently. She couldn't figure out who it was. He was the first one to see that his status was "undetermined", confusing the soldier. Natasha noticed it, too. His status should be "deceased".

"You were there when I fired two to his chest," he said. The woman nodded, she made the figure expand, and before she could look at his face more, it all disappeared and Fury's face popped up.

"Romanoff, I need you and Rogers at the D.C. headquarters, all of our stations in New York are compromised," the director was agitated.

"What? How?" The spy took the phone and started walking out, the soldier following behind her. Steve got on the motorcycle. The woman handed him some sunglasses and climbed behind him, wearing a pair of her own. The redhead rerouted the call to her comm so she could stash her phone safely in a pocket. It freed her arms to wrap around the super soldier.

Steve jumpstarted the bike, hearing the spy's conversation with the director because of the intercom she had given him. "The hostiles were looking for you, they took out some of our safe houses."

"How did they even get access to those?"

"I erased all the files before evacuating the compound yesterday. Either someone was working with them or they were doing a decryption before I secured everything," he said.

"You have any news on what they are?"

"They're after you."

"I know that."

There was a sigh over the comm. Steve was maxing out the bike. _Let's hope the roads haven't changed since 1945_.

"No, no, no, take the interstate," said the widow. She was talking to him now. "Take I-95 South." He laughed, making an almost deadly u-turn to make it to the exit. The woman behind him was unfazed.

"We couldn't recover anyone. I ordered some people to return to the compound but the men weren't there," Fury sighed. "We took blood samples and Erskine and her team are on it right now."

Natasha nodded despite knowing that the director couldn't see her. After Steve heard them say their goodbyes, he started a conversation. "America built many roads in the seventy years I was asleep?"

The spy laughed. "Yeah, it's much more efficient now."

They stopped for gas once. Natasha went to the bathroom and Steve was left leaning on the motorcycle, waiting for the load to finish. He was playing with his new wrist toy when a woman walked by him giggling. He looked up, raising a brow that the dame—and, really, anyone else—found him cute. He laughed it off and didn't say anything as he watched her walk back to her run down jeep. Steve saw Natasha exit the mini-mart and the tank clicked full. He pulled out the nozzle and as he was returning it, he felt someone else in his presence. "Okay, hi, I'm Rachel," the brunette with the worn jeep approached him.

He laughed, setting the nozzle back. "Steve."

"Nice to meet you, Steve. Take me out some time when you're back in town. Welcome to Philly," she said taking note of the fact that he looks like a biker passing by. She slipped a note into his hand with a number on it, winked, then left for her Jeep again. Natasha watched the whole thing unfold and smiled a little at the soldier's game.

"There's so many numbers," he said, pocketing the piece of paper before closing the gas cap and hopping on the bike.

"It's because we have cellphones," the spy said, laughing. She jumped on the back, put her sunglasses on, and hugged Steve. "So, you gonna call her?"

He laughed, going back on the interstate. "When will be back in Philadelphia?"

"If you don't take the job then you can do whatever you want, come back here even." They were talking normally through the comms because they wouldn't be able to hear each other through the heavy winds of the freeway.

"You make a good point," he said, overtaking a few cars to get to the carpool lane. "I don't know if you're trying to recruit me or not, Agent Romanoff."

She laughed, "Just trying to welcome you to this century as best I can."

Steve smiled at the thought. The soldier hadn't spent much time with the spy. They have talked more in the past twenty-four hours than they had in the past two weeks. So much has happened in the past day, too, that he couldn't believe he'd really only been alive for two weeks. The woman was a character. He looked at her as a leader, not that it was anything new. He was a soldier after all—_is _a soldier. She kept a certain kind of mystery that he knew intrigued anyone she met. It was captivating, seductive, even. Steve had heard stories and tales of her past life, but not from her. It's been known that she's never shared them with anyone so nothing's ever been confirmed. Her life at the KGB, her seductiveness and the way that she uses it for espionage, and the fact that she's never had a real relationship. Steve absolutely relates to the latter. He has a feeling that the hindrance to her ability in creating relationships is just a product of her upbringing. She's been through hell it seems.

The woman had one arm wrapped around from under his arm and up to his shoulder. The other was carefully pressed on his chest, diagonal from the side. She was being sensitive to his wounds from the night before. It was a warm feeling, considering that the arm wrapped from under his arm was holding on oh-so-very tightly because it's the uninjured arm. She didn't really have a lot of stability or support from the other, it was just there to keep her in balance. Steve really liked that. Considering that he hasn't really been able to do anything for her, no help or aid because of her hyper-independence, he's felt a sense of disconnect. He's a soldier who wants to help, yet he's stuck with a person who doesn't want it ever. So little things, like support for riding in the back of a motorcycle meant a little more than average. It was all very practical because she had no choice. The spy couldn't put her hands on the back handles because her forearm would be uncomfortable. The soldier took it as it came. Little things mattered when it came to the immovable assassin.

* * *

A/N: I felt like it may have been a little out of character with the shirt scene but I know that I needed to give you guys a little bit of romanogers considering that we've dove pretty deep in the story sans Natasha and Steve contact. I tried my best to make that encounter as natural as possible. :) Thanks for reading.


	6. Agent Rogers

I wish for lots of rights that I cannot attain, Marvel is one of them. Enjoy :)

* * *

Steve sat on one of the rolling chairs in the meeting room. He'd never been to Washington, though he was invited once to receive a medal, but he met his frozen fate before being able to get it. The compound was different, definitely bigger.

"You don't have to be here, Captain," said the director.

"I'm taking it," he said, spinning the chair around—very dramatic—to face him. Fury didn't protest. _I guess I'm Agent Rogers now._

"Good, because we could really use your help." The cyclops made his way to the front of the room where the television was. A few agents had occupied the seats, but Natasha was still missing. Last the soldier heard, she was making her way to the top floor to speak to councilmen. He didn't really know who those were.

The director briefed agents on intelligence, or lack thereof, sending many of them across New York and across all the destinations the Black Widow had walked. Clues were difficult to find when the people who could be leaving them were masters of clandestine service. Fury had an idea of who they were and he understood that they were specialized to leave no traces. Bodies were taken out of the site so quick that they couldn't even find one. If they had enough time, they probably would've cleaned the blood off, too. Their work was sloppy, considering that his number one agent was still alive, but he knows that Natasha and Steve coming out of that with two bullets each is enough to know that they were beyond average. "They rushed in," said the director. "Whoever commanded them saw a window of opportunity to come after Romanoff and didn't think twice. That's where they lost and we're thankful for that."

Steve thinks their leader may have been the mustached character. Despite his build and his strength, he was fallible. If he really was a part of Natasha's past, he assumed that the only reason mistakes were made was because of emotional attachment to their mission. The other spy entered that room. Steve was sure that she reached the same conclusion that he did, it didn't take a high IQ to understand that a well-oiled team of super—that's still up to question—soldiers trained for espionage making mistakes on the job wasn't common. The only reason they didn't get shot more was because the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (he was one now, and he liked that thought) are good, but they definitely would've preferred getting shot less than they did.

Fury dropped a file right in front of him and Natasha. They were the only agents left in the room. She opened it to reveal the man in the simulation, the man Steve struggled to fight. The Mustache. "Yuri Bezukhov," the director said, pulling up a larger version of the file on the television. He zoomed in on the man's picture, it was of him walking down a street. He had no mug shots, passport photos, or ID photos. Just that one picture. "It's been very difficult trying to track him down. Thanks to the system that analyzed every single person that walked through the New York headquarters, though, we were able to narrow our search based on his characteristics." It explained how quickly they were able to get that dossier on him, the hologram that Steve and Natasha were looking at just a few hours ago in the morning.

The spy was analyzing the picture, but there was something off about the way she's behaving. _Bad news from the councilpeople?_

"He has other aliases," Fury swiped the touchscreen television to another picture. It was a really young photo of the man. "He went by Ivan Bezukhov during his work with the KGB. When the Soviet Union fell, he was Yuri one more time."

"I thought everyone from the Red Room Academy was terminated," Natasha said, not taking her eyes away from the file.

"That's the thing," Fury said. "He wasn't related to Red Room at all. There is nothing in his past files. We've extracted everything and it's turning out that he's just a regular cop. He was stationed at Leningrad before the fall of the Union and now he works a desk job at Moscow. His family died during a KGB raid, so he's more a victim than a perpetrator."

"Maybe it's the vengeance he's looking for," said the Widow, finally looking up from the file.

"Highly unlikely that he'd be coming after you for that," said Fury. "You had already been a fugitive of the USSR when his family died, it was months after you went rogue, and another month after Clint found you. Black Widow Ops and Red Room Academy were already in ruins."

Natasha set the file down and closed it, leaning back in her seat to brainstorm his motives. "It just doesn't make sense for his grievances to be projected towards Agent Romanoff," the soldier butted in. "Do you have any idea where he is now?"

"No, but—" he got a call over his telecom, switching his attention to the screen. "Alright, I'll pull it up," he responded to the other person on the line. Files upon filed popped up on the screen. Millions of documents were being listed as everything is downloaded. Natasha stood up from her seat, stepping closer to the screen to make sure that she knew what she was looking at. "That's-"

"That's Project Wolf Spider," she whispered. _What does that even mean? _The soldier refrained from speaking it out loud, knowing fully well that she's had enough of the question.

The spy suddenly lumped on a seat, her face expressionless but deep in thought. Steve couldn't read her, but it's not like anyone could.

The files that were uploaded were cases. Photos of unique men popped up with every single one, almost always having "deceased" stamped on them. The spy looked on, seeing the montage of dead men, some of whom looked familiar.

Steve watched with her, noticing that the Black Widow symbol, which he had seen on her belt and on the shirt she wore the first time around, was similar to the symbol on the file. The only difference was that it was horizontal. A bowtie, he thinks, finally having a word for the shape. Natasha's shape was a vertical one.

Fury sighed. "That's not possible." He grew angry, swiping the television to unravel his kill list from seven years ago. There were red strikethroughs on all of the one thousand names Fury had in the system. He was rummaging through them, trying to find any one that wasn't killed, except there weren't any. He had succeeded the first time. This onslaught ate away at the director, afraid that he might have missed something, but he personally went through every single person, evaluated each piece that the intelligence gave him.

"It shouldn't be, even before you killed them all," Natasha said, still staring at the screen. Fury turned to her in agreement. She turned to the only confused person in the room. "After the death of Erskine and Red Skull—" Steve could almost wince at the names, one caused him his life with Peggy and the other made him who he was. It only pierced because Erskine was only alive with his creation for two seconds before taking bullets to the chest in front of him. "—every super soldier serum was destroyed. The formula died with Dr. Erskine. Zola had tried to replicate it but it was unsuccessful. It resulted in a lot of deaths, which was a better outcome than most." She paused and sighed. "Some of his subjects ended up with malformations, physically and psychologically. Those who survived almost always killed themselves."

Natasha proceeded to talk about numerous cases. This one man had an already abnormal genome, which Zola had failed to test for. He grew large, like Rogers, but lost his hearing in the process. It was documented that he couldn't hear the outside world, but heard everything inside him, his heartbeat, the food in his stomach, his lungs heaving. It drove him crazy. He would shout when he spoke, but only heard the vibrations in his throat. Every time he sneezed his head spun because it sounded like an explosion in there. The man ended up gouging his own eyes out and tearing all his hair. "They never found out if he had abilities like yours. The subject was too difficult to control. One day, they just found him dead. He had to shoot himself three different times because he survived the first two." Natasha wasn't agonized with her storytelling. She was almost sad for them, though it didn't show in her face.

She told some other stories, how they lost limbs or grew extra ones. Someone lost their skin because the muscle fibers engulfed them. He survived for a minute.

"Zola called that project Ground Zero," Fury butted in, taking a seat next to the spy. "He was especially enthused after you killed Red Skull."

"He was under American custody, how'd he even do it?"

"HYDRA still infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D., they took him back to Germany," he said. Steve feels like there's a "but" following the sentence.

Natasha finished it for him. "But he was taken to work for Department X," she began. "Think S.H.I.E.L.D. but bad."

"That's where I got all of these names from," Fury said, pointing at the screen.

"They created unethical training programs and espionage projects in order to provide weapons for the KGB. Essentially like you, but multiplied and brainwashed," she paused again. Steve noticed that she was trying to pick her words carefully. He didn't know why. "Some of them didn't actually need to be brainwashed because they take orphans and raise them that way. Even so, those children's minds were still played with in some way or another."

"Department X is the origin of what we call The Red Room Academy," Fury got up from his seat to uncover all of the files he has about the Soviet Union, everything the department has been gathering since Peggy created it. He flashed a picture of barracks in Stalingrad.

"In here is the Wolf Spider Ops," she said, pointing at a window on the brick building. Steve felt like this place was so familiar to her. "Professor Grigor Pchelinstov head-speared everything in the Red Room Academy, especially the Wolf Spider program."

"He ordered for the extraction of Zola," said Fury, "and under our noses, Soviet spies outmatched our protections."

"Zola was taken to try to recreate the super soldier serum," said the spy. "And he began on Patient Zero for the Wolf Spider Ops. He was a little Russian kid who they trained for fighting. The serum wasn't for making anyone larger or stronger like how they made for you to be. They were trying to give the boy abilities that no one could have." She paused, opening the file on Patient Zero. "When he turned twenty, they graduated him from the program. He was the only one who was a part of it. Zola was successful with the serum, enhancing almost everything about him." She zoomed in on his face. Niko Constantin was his name. "They couldn't control him. He wasn't a soldier, he was a rogue assassin. So, they killed him. And then Zola underwent the same project on numerous other men, but ended up killing all of them, whether they did it or the subjects did it to themselves. This all happened a couple of decades after you went in the ice."

"The Wolf Spider program didn't see the light of day after their thirty-eighth try," said the director.

Steve stood up, pointing at the men that had attacked him. "How did they manage to do it again?"

"They shouldn't have been able to," said the widow. "Zola burned the serum formula after all his tries and it died with him. S.H.I.E.L.D. killed all of them a week after this project was disbanded." Natasha looked through the files of the new Wolf Spider Ops again. "They probably tried doing it again, but it's not like it's giving different results." The files of the men said that they all died in different ways but all under the same thing. Malformations and genetic mutations almost always ended in suicide. The ones who turned out alive were deceased because Steve and the spy killed as much as they could at the compound the day before. "There's still so many more," said Natasha.

"Do we know where they are now?"

"We don't know where Yuri is," the director said. "But we do know where he could be." He zoomed in on a map. "His last known location was Moscow, but this satellite photo was taken hours ago at Arlington metro. I'm gonna need you to take him alive, Agent Romanoff." She was about to protest but he wasn't hearing it. "This is bigger than just trying to kill you. They're running a new operation we need to know about. Are you sure you're up for this? This might be a little too close."

"No, I can do it. I don't even know any of these men," she said straightly.

The director nodded. He looked to the captain and slid something across the table. "Your jackets are already made of kevlar but I'm going to need you both to put this on before leaving." They were vests, really thin ones. "They're from vibranium. Howard Stark made sure to find more for you," he said to the soldier.

The pair left and Steve smiled on their way to the elevator. "They cared more for you than anyone else will ever know," said the spy, referring to Howard and Peggy. She gave him a reassuring smile as she helped him slip it on the same way she had with his shirt earlier. It didn't have the same effect as before, but Natasha felt the soldier quiver at the slightest as she placed her hand at his chest. She didn't make any expressions, but her mind was happy at the thought. Natasha was sure she wasn't using her seductress tactics on a partner, maybe that's just who she was around him. She didn't know. She knows that's not how she was with Clint, though. She slipped her vest on, too.

When the elevator opened to the ground floor where everyone's cars were, Natasha grabbed Steve's earpiece, concealed it in her jacket pocket and crushed it. She did the same for hers. "Why would you do that?"

"Shut up and follow me," she whispered as the two kept walking to their motorcycle. "I brought down two helmets. I'm gonna need you to wear one."

"We went on a three-hour bike ride with just sunglasses on."

She sighed, replying as covertly as she could, ensuring that they remain under the radar if anyone was listening. "Hate to break it to you, but there are more freeway bugs in Virginia. Lots of bugs." He didn't know what kind of bugs she was talking about, but both kinds make sense.

He followed her as she grabbed the front seat of the bike. He didn't protest having to ride behind her. His arms were going to hold onto the back handles when he heard her speak through a comm that was attached in their helmets. "This ride's gonna be bumpy, Rogers. You're gonna need to hold yourself around me."

He laughed. "If this ride is that bumpy I'll end up tossing you out of the bike with me." She was driving slowly in the garage.

"I'm gonna need you to trust me," said the spy as they entered the streets. He obliged and wrapped his arms around her waist. "I went to tech and made these helmets," said the spy. "We can talk at a frequency that S.H.I.E.L.D. transmitters can't hear and I put buffers in them so that even if they could hear, they can't make out anything. They're all over the streets." He was impressed, he didn't know the master hacker was also a hardware nerd.

"You wanna fill me in on what's going on?"

"I'm gonna need you to trust me, Steve, and I know deep down you do despite having known me for a day."

"Im ninety-five in a twenty-five-year-old's body who specifically told you that the hard determination of joining this organization was a matter of directing my loyalties to the correct people. It isn't easy to trust."

"I know," she said as she revved the bike faster. "S.H.I.E.L.D. can see us, but they can't hear us," she said. "I was up with the councilmen, briefing them on the supposed attack on me."

"What did they say?"

"They apologized that they didn't read it sooner," said the spy, though there's a tinge of anger in her voice. "You tell me, how the organization that's supposed to stop wars before they happen not see an impending attack on one of their own."

"I don't know how to answer that."

"We took down Hitler after you went in the ice. You are the reason HYDRA died. The remaining issue was the Nazi Reich," she said, the wheels spinning faster and faster and maneuvering the bike through cars like she was in a race. "S.H.I.E.L.D. had seen that Hitler's regime lived on past the end of the World War. You saw how many agents we have deployed. We have markers on everyone, especially in Moscow. If Yuri Bezukhov was really from there, we would know way more about him than just being a cop." She beat a red light, almost causing an accident. "The fact that they've encrypted the most important facts of the case is what threw me off. I asked the councilmen why they were after me."

"What did they say?"

"They said it's because the Russians wanted to take me so they could jumpstart a regime. They wanted to start the Red Room Academy again," she paused, "and they wanted me to surrender myself to get intel."

"What are you claiming?"

"After telling me that they've created super soldiers to come and kill me, do you really think the Wolf Spiders are going to take me alive? Think about it. Why would I surrender myself to a bunch of people who came here to kill me? The councilmen are smart enough to know that they shoot on sight, why would they make me surrender to perform an espionage mission that would be impossible in the first place? They're not here to use me for a neo-KGB operation. They're here to make sure I don't see it, and everyone else seems to be on their side."

The soldier didn't answer.

"S.H.I.E.L.D.'s turned on us, Steve."

Turns out that he wasn't a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent after all.


	7. Equation

Special thanks to Grimnar, rashene, Ana, Christine-Danielle and LoneWolfOneill for reviewing. Also, thank you to all the follows and likes! - R :)

I don't have Marvel rights.

* * *

"We're not going to the subway," said the Captain as they pulled over for gas once again. Natasha nodded in agreement. "They'll be there ready for you. We're not going in an ambush again." The big man was devouring a burger.

"We have to move somewhere, though. Fury's probably already looking."

"Do you think he knows it?"

"Yeah, but I don't think he's on their side. He's probably there to oversee everything that happens to sabotage whatever it is the agency's trying to do." She sighed, drinking from her bottle as she leans on the motorcycle. "He gave me this," she said, pulling out a tablet. It was thinner than the phones he's seen. "He's probably going to get us into another safe house soon."

"We're gonna need to move," he said, taking the nozzle out of the bike.

"Alright, give me a second," she said, tossing all the wrappers of her finished food. Before Steve hopped on the bike, she checked every single part of it, making sure that there was nothing on there that could tail them. "Shit," she said that the soldier faintly heard.

"What is it?" He went around to where she was. She turned and pulled out something tiny. It was a small bulb, probably the height of a quarter if it was flat. It emitted light and he saw that she had pulled it from something attached to the bike as the wires connected to it sparked, clearly broken.

"We have to go," she said quickly, as they both put their helmets on. Then shots fired from all directions.

Steve hopped on the bike to get away from the station, almost turning them upside down as he revved the bike too quickly, making them rely on the back wheel. "Focus on the road," she said calmly. Steve felt a string wrap around him. The spy was wrapping her grappling hook around his stomach, just below where his side wound was. He felt her turn and now their backs were on each other. She wrapped herself with the grappling hook, too, then tied both its ends to her belt so that she was stable as Steve drove. Shots were being fired, and he saw from his side mirrors that there were two bikes on both his flanks, inching closer and closer. He revs to make the bike reach its max. There was a helicopter trailing them, too. The soldier started driving in a zig-zag pattern as people from the chopper fired. They were in the middle of nowhere, putting the two rogue agents at ease knowing that no one's going to get hurt.

Shots were firing, hitting almost all of the bike and none of the people on it. "Natasha I'm gonna need you to take out that chopper, leave the bikes up to me." He suddenly slows the bike, allowing the other motorcycles to abruptly catch his pace. Without turning his head, only looking at the side mirrors, he activated his left shield and punched the cyclist before he could engage his gun. The shield ended up piercing through his side, eventually causing him to fall off the bike. At almost the same time, he kicked the bike of the guy on the right. He was able to recover. He fired shots but the soldier grabbed his wrists to the divert the bullets past him. Twisting his arm, he heard a groan come out from the hostile. The soldier still hadn't turned his head and watched his movements through the side mirror in order for him to continue driving straight. He felt Natasha firing at the chopper. The soldier almost fully braked as he held onto the wrist of his perpetrator, causing the bike he was using to come out from under him. Steve sped the bike up again, dragging the man through the ground and eventually stepped on his face, leaving him unconscious. He began driving in a zig zag pattern again as the chopper kept firing, the spy was able to stall by wounding one of them.

Natasha sees two heads out of both sides of the chopper, the hostiles carrying machine guns. She almost had one on lock, but Steve's sudden changes in direction caused her to miss. "I'm going up there," she said. She expected him to refute and when he tried, she spoke over him. "Vantage point is terrible down here," she said. He sighed. "You keep going, you'll find me jumping out when I'm done with these assholes," she said, getting a small laugh out of the soldier. He felt the string around him unravel and their back-to-back connection severed. The woman used that same grappling hook to fire it up at the helicopter. She swiftly pulled her legs up to jump from the bike and use the momentum to land on one of the chopper's landing bars. She then threw one of her small discs to the hostile on the left side, electrocuting him. She took her helmet off and tossed it to his face so that he would fall over into the helicopter. It allowed for her to hang without getting shot at. Swinging, she jumped into the helicopter like an acrobat. The guy from the other side was waiting for her, landing a punch on the left side of her face. "Ouch," she said, out of humor, not pain. She snatched one of her batons and hit him in the knee, making him fall and her knee jerked up to his face and her elbow hitting his back simultaneously.

Someone else came from the cockpit. He missed a shot when the woman ducked, punching him three times in the stomach to no avail. _A wolf spider_, she thought. He landed a hook to her side, jostling her as the helicopter jostled with them. She ended up catching the side of the door, now dangling with one arm. With momentum, before he could gather his gun, she pushed herself back in with her feet first, kicking him in the chest and causing the gun to fly out of the chopper. She took her gun to shoot him, but he averted it by holding her wrist. He was about to knife her when she spun around in his hold and wrapped her knees around his neck. He fell and in a swift motion, her wrist made it to his neck and shocked him at the cuffs' max. It would kill a normal person, but all she knows was that he was unconscious. Then there was a blow to her head and she saw that the chopper was on autopilot. She ducked, pulled her legs out and spun through his feet, tripping him. Two shots made it through the man, one on the chest and one to the head for assurance measures. _Gotta make sure he's _dead_ dead. _And then she caught a glimpse of what he looked like. He was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. They've sparred a few times, but never really talked. Natasha shook her head, expressionless. _What a waste._ She shot the transmission and the dashboard to kill the chopper. The whole thing started to fall. She grabbed her bike helmet and took the device that she created in it, the comm, and put it in her ear.

"Rogers I'm gonna need you to catch me," she said.

"On it," she heard over the intercom. Almost at the exact moment that the helicopter hit the ground, she jumped out of the door and landed on top of the soldier, literally right on his arms. He winced, probably from the shoulder injury.

"Sorry," she apologized, moving around him like a spider and taking her seat in the back.

* * *

"We're off the grid now," said Natasha, lifting the blinds to see through the window. The soldier nodded, wincing as he took his jacket off, along with everything else on him that weren't his shirt or pants.

"Whose house?" He asked.

"Fury's," the woman said, doing the same and undressing herself of all her weapons. "He doesn't come here often. And if he wanted to find me he knows I'll be here."

"You trust him?" He asks, wiping his face off from all the dirt.

"This is the only place people other than him wouldn't expect us to be," said Natasha. "And, yes. There's too much that Fury has built on good faith. To just jeopardize everything for the sake of trying to kill me?" She scoffed. "He would've killed me, himself. He's old, but he'll still take me."

Steve laughed. "Can he?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Never tried."

There was a moment of silence. He set all of his weapons on the couch and organized Natasha's gauntlets also. She walked outside for a short minute, alarming the soldier. Natasha came back with two apples in her hands and the zinc spray she packed in the back of the bike. She tossed the apple and the can to him, earning a confused look from the soldier. "There's an apple tree outside," she said with a small laugh. The spy sat next to him, still on edge from the last incident but allowing herself to relax a little. The other remained alert.

"Why does Red Room want you?" He finally mustered up the courage to ask. For the world's bravest man, there still lingers the lack of ability to talk to women.

"Because I'm from there," she said. That was something he already put together. Clint told him about her time with the KGB and with the amount of times he's heard "Red Room" and her name in a sentence, it wasn't a wasted assumption.

"Yeah, but," he swallowed large amounts of apple. "Why were you there?"

She was silent, like she didn't want to talk about it. He didn't push it, the soldier sensing a lot of resistance. She ended up giving him a little bit, though.

"I became their greatest prodigy at just eleven," she said, looking down at her food in shame of her past self. "I was a great ballerina, too, by the way." Natasha laughed humorlessly, trying to lighten the conversation. "But...yeah. How do you make a deadly assassin at fifteen? Train her at five. Raise her to be a psychopath. Take away her ability to empathize and desensitize her from weakness and violence and pain—her own pain and the pain of others."

He glanced at her, the woman still looking down to avoid eye contact. "That doesn't apply to you anymore, though," he reassured. She still didn't answer his question. He's sure that she probably doesn't know why they were after her. He also sensed that she didn't really care why.

"Does it?"

"I've known you for two weeks," he said, gulping down the last piece of apple. "And the things you've done for others in the past two days alone, make up for the past decades you've lived."

"I don't think it works like that," she said, shifting in her seat.

"You're right," he said. "It doesn't. I don't think there's an equation. It's not "doing one good thing erases one bad thing"." He looked at her with sincerity. Steve knows that she doesn't believe it but he felt a sense of urgency to try. "It's the things that you change about yourself. If you know that that's not who you are anymore, you deserve some forgiveness from yourself, even if you don't get it from others."

She nodded. He knows that he didn't get through to her and that she was placating him, just so that the conversation won't become too argumentative. "People are always harder on their own selves. It's human nature."

"I've defied the laws of human nature already," he chuckled, talking about his going from scrawny boy to muscled giant. From his asthmatic lungs to being able to run thirteen miles in thirty minutes. From aging to suspending against time. "And you can't really call us normal."

She knew he was right. The Black Widow has greater ability to withstand torture. Her acrobatic skills and strength were unparalleled. Natasha was in the top 1% of the greatest fighters in the world. Both of them shouldn't really be in conversation of normal people or the perceived notion of human nature. Her psychological capacity to see violence, or to feel it, is not with the customs of human nature. And there was more about her and her specialness that she didn't let Steve know. But, like all other people, there's only so much about her ability to compartmentalize. The biggest part of her past is the thing that she uses to define her. No amount of emotional restraint or rational perspective can change her, even if those things came from her own brain. She was too far gone, drowning in her guilt to ever rise above it.

So instead of responding, she let the silence take over. She felt Steve looking at her, hoping that she continue the conversation or hoping that it stopped because he succeeded in changing her mind. He wanted to get to know her and she felt it, but like all other people she's put herself with, the idea of professional relationships took over. She can't let him know more than he already does. Though she trusts him, she knows that he can compromise her. She didn't really know in what way, but in some way, he could. The soldier was good at that.

They let a week pass. There wasn't anything too alarming in that week that forced them to leave. They were in the middle of nowhere and the next house was thirty miles south. The pair decided to recuperate. Steve's wounds were healed, Natasha's were almost there. He was very skeptical of that, and she knew that she couldn't really hide it. Well, she could if she just acted it out, but she didn't feel particularly fond of having to wince and groan and act like she was in pain if she didn't need to. Natasha was alright if the man assumed things about her, she just knows that she'll never disclose them with him even if he asked. She just decided to leave him in the dark and in his own assumptions. It may or may not ruin his trust with her, but at this point, she didn't really care. They only had each other now. And maybe Clint and Fury. But in the literal now, in the physical sense, they only had each other, so it didn't do him good to not trust the one person who got him out of death.

"I don't know how long I can last eating canned food," she said, pouring the can's contents in a bowl and putting it in a microwave.

He laughed. "One time," he started, "my team and I were forced to camp in Kaliningrad. We had just finished a mission on the Schnellzug." The spy raised a brow as she put a spoonful of nasty soup in her mouth. Her back was leaning against the counter as she faced the soldier who sat on the other side of the island. "It's this train that HYDRA made to get around. We destroyed it but not until after we figured out where it led to. It brought us all the way to the Eastern Front and we were met with an ambush." She noticed his eyes gloss over at the memory. Natasha wasn't really aware of the fact that it was only like remembering something that happened to him last month. His perception of time was different considering that he spent more than half of his life in suspension. His memories were very fresh despite them being seventy years old to the people of now. "My best friend, uhm," he tried to keep it together. "He had died on the train, so there were only six of us left. And in the end there were four of us, but we had enough MREs, so we ate them every day for three months, freezing up at Kaliningrad before we were able to hop back over the Eastern Front and go home. These canned food taste even worse than them," he said, making a disgusted face to lighten the mood. It got a small laugh out of the spy.

"Was that where you learned Russian?"

He shook his head, no. "I had already known it then. I was stationed at Stalingrad for six months, a year before all of that happened." Natasha knew that now that he brought it up. She saw that in his museum.

"Have you been to The Smithsonian?"

"Bucky said he brought a date there once," he said somberly. "But I never got that chance to."

"You have an exhibit there," she said as he smiled. It was lacking the sort of pride she expected from any other person. He was just…_happy?_ It reminded Steve more of Peggy and Howard than anything else. They really left a mark on the world, something he knew they were already capable of. The magnitude of their achievements were expected, he just didn't know that a majority of their projects were around him.

"I know that Stark Industries paid for it," he said. "Howie was a good man." The spy smiled at that, liking his way of talking about historical characters as people part of his life. It's like referring to Thomas Jefferson as Tommy or Martin Luther King Jr. as Marty. Well, to him they weren't historical figures, they were family.

A week passed by and it was seven days of a learning curve for Steve. Natasha spent the time teaching him everything new in the century. They lounged in the couch, put their feet up on the coffee table and talked about celebrities, computers, and new movies. The topics ranged from Star Trek and comics.

"I owned a few editions of Superman comics," he said, surprising the spy.

"Don't tell anyone I told you this but Agent Coulson has a crap ton of Captain America comics," she said in a hushed tone.

The man chuckled remembering back to his old days of performing. He told her about how he had to tour the nation trying to sell war bonds as scientists tried to reverse-engineer the serum. "It worked, I guess," he said with a sigh, pertaining to the new Wolf Spiders.

"Not nearly in its perfection with you," she said. He took that as a compliment even though it wasn't really about him and more about Dr. Erskine's work. The compliment just accompanied him.

"He didn't want to fall into the wrong hands," Steve started.

"And that's why he died for it," a new voice echoed the room, causing the spy to grab one of her electric discs from the table and Steve taking a Glock. "Relax, it's just me," he said, as Nick Fury walked into the room.


	8. Idiot Son

I don't own Marvel. Thanks for the reads and reviews are like candy. - R

* * *

Steve was leaning on the kitchen island and Natasha was pacing across the carpeted floors of Fury's living room. The director was the only one sitting down. The pair didn't know how to handle the terrible news he just broke to them.

"How did it happen?" Natasha asked, stopping for a second to ask him the question, then went back to pacing.

Fury was silent. "I don't know," he said. And that was the first time the spy ever saw him confused or disheveled. He was genuinely frustrated and baffled at his own lack of conscientiousness.

S.H.I.E.L.D. was infiltrated with a pro-war movement. Russian collusion made its way up the ranks and many agents have been compromised. Fury didn't know to what extent, but he was at a point where he couldn't trust anyone. They were after Natasha, but they didn't know why. Maybe those that were a part of the pro-war movement didn't like that she was a part of the department and put a bounty on her. One concrete thing, though, was that they were definitely after her. It was solid to Steve considering that he had heard one of them explicitly say that the widow must be killed. "They wanted you to look like a casualty back in New York headquarters. But they were targeting you and killed may others to make it look like you were just another one of the bodies."

Natasha stopped pacing. Perhaps Fury could've worded it better, but Steve realized how hard that was to hear for the agent. He knows her enough to think that she probably thinks that all of these men died because of her. She was the one person they were looking for and they killed everyone who was virtually in front of her. Her long history of trying to erase every assassination from her hands had brought her full-circle into this moment, the realization that she will never be able to get away from it.

He was about to talk when something interesting in the television caught his eye. Fury took the remote and turned up the volume. "Following the events of last week's attack on a covert government base in New York City, the men in suits and red ties, who many believe are Russian operatives, have struck again inside all working stations of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington D.C. The building called the _Triskelion_ has also been terrorized. The current death toll is listed at least at 563, many of them being government officials. The public perceived this as an attack on the current President of the United States, considering that he was at the Triskelion to follow a meeting, but Mr. President and the First Lady were luckily escorted out before the attack commenced."

Natasha plopped on the couch and sunk into it as deep as she could. This didn't seem like news to Fury, because he already pictured it happening. "I saw the councilmen evacuating and told as many of the agents I trusted to go home for the day," he said quietly.

"Who's behind this?" Steve asked.

"It's a neo-Soviet operation," Natasha whispered. Fury didn't interrupt, letting the soldier know that she was correct. The spy gathered herself to talk despite the emotional hardship she was facing. "Before I defected, we underwent these missions. A lot of villages in Terijoki, Leningrad and some territories by the Gulf of Finland were terrorized in order to build a new Communist republic. They were destroyed because they disagreed, and it all went under the radar. I-" she stuttered. "I, along with other KGB and Red Room agents took them out. We wiped these villages from the map like they never existed; we killed fathers and their children even if they surrendered. This was all done quietly and no one knew, until the word got out and there was mass unrest. That led to even more people dying. Those who protested on the streets were…they were bombed."

"But this is different. They're letting everyone see," Steve said.

"Yeah, but they're doing that for a purpose. It's so our people hold grudges against our own government and theirs."

Fury started talking again. "Rogers," he said. "You're a soldier." He waited for the man to nod before continuing. "What starts a war?"

"Countries fighting for power," Steve responded.

"And Russia wants power," Natasha said as she stood up to grab her gauntlets.

"That still doesn't explain why they were after Nat."

"You both will figure that out," said the director. "I need you two to go back to New York. I have Agent Hill on the streets trying to find where they're hiding. I got a tip from her this morning that they're in a Manhattan warehouse. I need you both to check it out." The pair was hitching their instruments onto themselves as Fury gave them the instructions. "And for god's sake, use a car." He said as he tossed them keys to his Rolls Royce.

"I'm driving," said the spy. The soldier didn't really care for it and just laughed in that small moment of jubilance that came out of Natasha. Everything that they've been thrown hasn't been easy on her, and he'd rather let her bask in momentary enjoyment instead of jibing. He also didn't know how to drive an automatic, so there was no need for protest.

"Not a scratch, Romanoff," he said as the two were already out of the door. He shook his head knowing that it'll probably be beat up the next time he sees it.

* * *

"This is a Slurpee," she said to him as she handed him a large cup of very very crushed ice. It seems that they've been spending a lot of time in gas stations.

Steve almost spit it out in disgust. "People drink this?" He asked as he gave it back to the laughing woman.

"It's good," she said as she sipped through the straw and entered the driver's side of the car.

"I feel that there's a large production of unhealthy food in this age," he said.

"I think that's your way of calling Americans fat," Natasha said, laughing. Steve shook his head vigorously, trying to retract his statement. "But people live longer now, compared to before. They can live up to their late eighties, except you're like, way past that so I guess I can't make an argument."

Steve chuckled a little at the insult, then remembered his mother. "I guess that's good. My mom died when she was fifty-three," he said sadly, looking out the window at all the cars and the trees and hills beyond. "I believe you guys have inoculations against tuberculosis now."

Natasha glanced at him sadly. "Yeah, I'm sorry Steve."

He looked over and smiled at her. "She was happy when she went. I just wish she could've seen me after the serum. I bet she would've been proud."

"She was proud before that. Despite her son getting beat up in Hell's Kitchen like every week, I guarantee that she was already proud of everything that you were beforehand," she said as he nodded. "You becoming bigger doesn't make you any more worthy than when you weren't, Steve."

"I know, I guess," he paused. "I guess I just never saw myself that way because I was incapable of so many things before the serum. I couldn't punch or run. I was able to do a couple of push-ups during training, though," Steve said, getting a laugh out of the woman.

"You and I both know that our physicality doesn't amount to what our intentions are," she said. He doesn't think she believed it, though. She spent a lot of her life with her gift, using it for the wrong side and now she's living with a lot of guilt. "At least that's what you let me know."

"And you're right," he said last as the car entered a comfortable silence.

Natasha parked the car four blocks away from the warehouse so as to not be suspicious. She and Steve had noticed what it looked like and parking a Rolls Royce in an underdeveloped community wuold surely turn some heads. Squatters were built out of old establishments. Some of the buildings were almost torn down. She felt that if she blew on it it would all collapse. Those who didn't live in the squatters were sitting on the sidewalk with their shopping carts of clothes. The spy noticed Steve's sadness as he stared at the never-ending street of homeless and poverty. They weren't dressed like anyone else was, but it's not like they're undercover. They just made sure to avert any attention that may come to them and walk through the streets silently.

"What happened here?" He finally spoke, asking about the community.

"I don't know," she whispered. "Probably lost funding or just neglected everything. People can barely get enough jobs in this economy."

Steve looked on, his melancholy coming from the dour view of Hell's Kitchen. He remembered it being better than this. It wasn't the best, but there was potential in most places. "I got beat up in that alley," he said, getting a morose laugh from the spy. "And probably all other existing alleys." She looked at him with sadness and with humor at the same time. "My mom got upset a lot, but I didn't care because she was a nurse," he smiled at a memory. "I always came home knowing she'll fix me after five minutes of yelling."

"She must've always been scared," Natasha replied. "Having an idiot for a son must be so stressful." Steve laughed at the comment, until Natasha stopped and pulled him with her. They were hiding in an alley. "That's where the coordinates lead us," she said. Peering around the corner was a typical abandoned warehouse. It looked like it used to be a nightclub of some sort.

After seeing what it looked like, Steve looked around in the alley before climbing the brick wall to get into the fire escape staircase on the side of the building. Natasha didn't protest and followed suit. They got a high enough vantage point with some cover, looking out into the large lot and the marina behind it. There were two black indestructible trucks at the front, letting them know that this was probably it. "There's four pacing north to southeast," he said to her, pointing at the men in suits. "Two in the back of the warehouse and one that's pacing west to northeast."

It looked like one of those stealth video games to Natasha. And she loved doing them much more than playing them. "Here's the plan," she said, pointing at the building in front of them. "You're not much of a spy, Cap, so I'm not pushing you in there."

"No, I can do it," he said, a little offended at her lack of faith.

"No offense, Steve, but I know you've walked into enemy stations taking out thirty by yourself, but the point here is to not make noise," she said. He sighed, knowing that she had a point.

"I could use some practice," he said with a small smile, not making much of an attempt to persuade her, but just getting it out there for humor.

She shook her head. "It's too high stakes, we'll practice back at the compound—or whatever remaining facility we still have." She looked at the men once again. "I'll take one at the front and I'm gonna need you to shoot the guy next to him. You're going to have to stay up on that building until we finish everyone outside of it." He nodded. As a captain, he wasn't used to not being the designated tactician. As a soldier, he reveled in the orders she gave him. "You're basically in charge of all the men at the right side of the lot. Every time I subdue the person that's near them, you take them out. I'm going to lure one person behind the building, then get out of there in time for you to shoot him. That leaves the other guy behind the building to me, got it?" She asked him, seeing him listening deeply and with full focus in her words. It was nice giving orders. Her and Clint worked so well together that they both knew what to do. There was no briefing needed, because each person already had their designated marks. After working together for so long, their tactics became unspoken because they did it enough times to know how it would always be. To be giving orders and briefing someone on a mission was more thrilling than she remembered. If this were her and Clint, he'd know that he'd be at the rooftop and all she had to do was call a side, east or west, and he'd take care of the opposite.

"You ready, Cap?" She asked, putting her fist out for him to bump.

"I always am," he said. When he bumped her fist, she sent the smallest of electrostatic shock, causing him to retract his hand. It didn't hurt, it just surprised him. It got a laugh out of the Widow. "Please don't ever do that."

She just smiled, shooting her grappling hook on the floor of the roof, and swinging down three floors to the ground. She gave him a salute which he shook his head at. When she got the ground, she saw the soldier leap from one building to the next, taking his spot on the roof and putting a silencer on his Glock 34.

He sat up at the vantage point. Steadying his hand, he set it on a mark and watched as Natasha went up behind a guy to subdue him, but took longer than expected. The man showed some resistance. "They're enhanced, Steve," she said between punches. She finally knocked him out by electrocuting his neck. "I have faith in your shooting skills, but I'm gonna need you to aim wisely or else we'll be met with an ambush," he heard over his comm.

"Trust me," he said, firing a shot straight into the temple of the guy that stood in the same line as the one Natasha had just taken down. The shot was impeccable, going through his temple and out of his opposite cheek.

"Aight," she said, staring at the dead guy and giving the man on the roof a thumbs up. It was an unnecessary gesture that made the soldier almost laugh. He marked the guy next to the truck and knowing that no one would see him, fired one on the back of his head. He saw that Natasha just went straight to electrocuting the Wolf Spiders, because the strangulation and subduing techniques weren't working on the men three times her size.

"Shit, Steve, on my 3 o'clock," she said. Steve saw that a suit got curious, walking over to where Natasha was behind the other truck.

"I can't fire, someone just walked out of the building," he said. He kept his composure, knowing that he was three steps away from finding Natasha.

"I'll take care of that." She started running around the other side of the truck to take out the guy that just left the warehouse and Steve fired just as it happened. It was a bullseye to the back of the head. "Thanks, Cap," she said. She went around one side of the warehouse and threw a disc on the ground to catch the attention of the man looking out of the marina. Steve fired twice, one to the head and one to the chest for extra measure. The soldier saw her turn and run to the other side of the warehouse to take out the remaining guy. Natasha hopped on his back and shocked his neck. Steve jumped down from the three story building like he was jumping from a chair. He rolled on the ground to soften his fall and started walking as soon as his feet touched the ground. Like a badass, he discarded his gun's magazine and put a new one in. "Nice work, Captain," she said with a flirtatious smirk.

"We're gonna need to find a way to get in there without getting caught," he said. "We don't know how many more are in there." She nodded and this time he started giving directions. "Grapple up to the roof. I'll use the truck to get myself up there." She followed his orders, climbing up the wall like a spider with her line grappled on the beaten roof. It wasn't brick like the other buildings, it was made purely of tin, was built like a typical house, angled, and prone to slipping if one were to make a mistake.

"The roof makes a lot of sound, be careful when you get up here," Steve heard her through the comm. He silently jumped from the truck and his hands caught the side of the roof. He pulled himself up and stepped as cautiously as he could, making his way to Natasha who was looking through a hole. "What the hell is that?"

Steve saw a chair, something you'd see in a dentist clinic. He shook his head, not knowing the answer to her question. A man was forced on it, someone both Steve and Natasha thought were familiar. "That's one of the doctors who helped me," he whispered. Natasha nodded in accordance, remembering him as one of the scientists that assisted Dr. Erskine in thawing the soldier.

"I'm gonna need you to talk, Doctor," a man's voice resounded. Steve counted how many suits were in sight before looking at the spear head and realizing that it was Yuri Bezukhov. Natasha was taken aback, finally being able to see the man's face without hindrance. She was out of her element and it troubled the soldier.

"There's nothing t-to say," the man on the chair said pleadingly. Yuri was composed. He didn't have the arrogance of a villain. He just looked like he was on a mission; it was all business for the man of Natasha's past.

"I'm sure you've been told where agents hide out," he said, pulling some kind of torture device that Steve isn't familiar with.

"What is that?" He whispered to the spy next to him.

"He's gonna pull out his teeth," she said casually, almost like it was intriguing to watch. Steve cringed at the thought.

"I-I don't know where she is! Please…p-please believe me," the doctor said, shaking. The soldier looked at him and empathized with his fear.

"We can't let him do that," he said to his partner.

"The Black Widow has to be killed, Dr. Skelton," Yuri said, making the spy freeze.

"Natasha we need to have a plan," the soldier was asking for orders now. He knew that she was being captivated by the conversation because it was about her, but they couldn't waste anymore time watching before the scientist was harmed.

"She is a hindrance to our operation," Yuri continued as he put his gloves on, nearing the victim on the chair. "You understand that right?" He was patronizing, though his face was still emotionless. There isn't a sign that expressed that he was enjoying this, but it doesn't show that he's hating this situation either. It's like he was just doing a job. Bezukhov was so transfixed on the hunt for the spy that he wasn't willing to play games with anyone. It made him even scarier to Natasha.

The doctor on the chair nodded vigorously. "Natasha!" Steve said in a high whisper, and softly jabbing her arm causing her elbow to land because of the forearm injury. It wasn't in pain but it was still uncomfortable and her control wasn't at its peak. The elbow's contact with the roof made noise and the two agents see that it stopped the suits inside, alarming them. They didn't see the pair because they got out of sight quickly enough. Natasha glared at Steve, and he looked at her apologetically. "We. need. a. plan," he said with a whisper.

"Well, whatever that plan's going to be, it's going to shit now," she said, as a few of the Wolf Spiders shuffled out of the warehouse under Bezukhov's orders to check out the noise. "They're gonna find the bodies we left out there," she said.

"Okay, well then we need a new plan," he said.

"The plan is shoot at anything moving, except Dr. Skelton and Yuri," she said, taking her grappling hook so that she could swing down from the side of the building.

"Wait, why Yuri?" He asked, jumping down of the warehouse on the opposite side of the building so that the suits leaving were met with an ambush in both corners.

"He's mine," she said with a tinge of anger in her voice. He heard her grunt over the comm, followed by kicks and punches. She took out her batons from her back and connected them to make a staff. At first, five guys were on her until shots were fired and the soldier with his triangular shields joined the party.

"I shot him twice in the chest," he said, stabbing one through the gut, but to his surprise, he stood up, acting like it was a minor scratch and launched one to the soldier's face. "I don't think I can kill him even if I wanted to," Steve continued, like he hadn't just been punched. It annoyed the soldier more than hurt him, so the Wolf Spider got four straight stabs to the chest with the full force of anger a super soldier could muster. "You better be down now," Steve said to him. And so down he was.

Her staff hit about three men, then she disconnected them so that she could use the electric shocks at its fullest. She was able to subdue one soldier, but she was caught from behind, getting choked by one. Steve was busy with three other men, but managed to fire a bullet straight through the guy's head once he heard Natasha's chokes. That momentary lapse in concentration against his own hostiles resulted in him getting stabbed in the stomach. The spy was able to hurl one of her discs to whoever did that and the soldier continued on fighting despite his bleeding midsection. "I'm gonna need you to extract Dr. Skelton out of there, Nat," he said in between groans and heavy breaths.

"I don't know if I can let you manage this in your state," she said, taking one more man down. As another came at her, she shot him with a grappling hook and electrocuted him. He tried to overpower it so Natasha dropped her baton to unhitch a gun and shot him between his eyes.

"I'm fine," he said, in obvious pain. "Get the doctor."

"No" was her stubborn answer. It infuriated Steve in some way. "There's three more left anyway, it'll take us a minute," she said. It took them fifty-seven seconds, actually.

"Do you know how hard it is to do a job when your orders aren't being followed," he said, out of breath as he clicked his shields back into their incognito form and grabbed a gun instead. They made their way inside.

She smirked at him. She had a gash on her arm that he didn't notice. She moved like she didn't notice either. Her batons were in her hands, guarding herself as they entered. "I know you're a captain, Captain. But you're not really a captain, captain." That confused the man. "Your title's more of a moniker than a title," she said, to clarify.

He sighed. "What do I need to do to get some respect around here?" It was all bickering, as the spy saw him smile.

"Oh, I respect you," she started, moving through the doors of the warehouse. There seemed to be a lot more hallways than expected. "I respect my elders." She laughed as the soldier shook his head. They made it to the center of the whole building, seeing that no one was there. Steve dropped his guard in disappointment, putting his gun back in the holster. The only man left was a dead doctor on the chair. "Dammit," whispered Natasha. She was still alert, looking at everything around the warehouse. There were no lofts and the only other exit was open. They deduced that Yuri Bezukhov fled that way. She hitched her batons back on her back.

Steve looked at the doctor. He shook his head, upset. There was static on a radio right next to him. "Ch-sh…m-Miss Natalia Alianovna Romanova," a man spoke through it. A hologram flashed out of it. "It's nice to finally meet you," he said. She was perplexed, remembering that he had asked her if she remembered him back in New York Headquarters. Did that really happen or did her consciousness substitute what happened to her in the training simulation into real life? "I'm sure you know my name by now." The video was recorded beforehand, since there wasn't an active response to Natasha's movements. He wasn't looking at her, but just gazing his eyes straight into the camera when he filmed this.

"I look a lot like someone you may know," he started. The pair just stood, captivated by what he had to say. "We met once. I was thirteen and you were five." The video popped a three-dimensional hologram of the barracks of the Red Room Academy, similar to the picture that Steve saw when they were in the Triskelion meeting room. He remembered Natasha pointing at which floor the Wolf Spiders Ops were being held. "We were almost best friends. You lived here, but I didn't. I only snuck in sometimes. You'd tell me about ballet, I remember." The man was as composed as he was earlier. He wasn't trying to be patronizing. He was just telling a story like anyone else would. "I'd tell you about cars. We got about thirty minutes a week of talking to each other. Dad would always pull me out at a certain time. I didn't understand why he left _you_ there but brought me home," he said. A picture flashed. The man looked a lot Yuri, but there was small distinction between them. "Remember him?" Yuri asked her, his Russian accent mixed with anger. He wasn't looking for an answer and, instead, continued his outpouring. His speech became more of a diatribe now. "One day, he just, didn't come home," he said. "I don't know what happened. I was nineteen," he said. This man looked exactly the same as the one she encountered in the training simulation. Yuri and him were practically twins but Natasha was able to distinguish this older man.

More pictures were flashing, but none of them seemed to be jogging Natasha's memory. "You stopped talking to me about ballet, you know?" And then one picture. A man with a sack over his head, out on the street, probably a mile away from the barracks. It was in her simulation. She remembered shooting that man, but didn't really know who it was. "Do you remember now, Natalia?" There was anger in his voice, though it didn't show much. "My father was a good man," the hologram whispered.

She put the pieces together. "He was a father to you, too," Yuri said. And Natasha almost broke down. "He was really _really_ good. And you owe him and me a debt."

Steve, collecting himself, suddenly heard three quick beeps coming out of the radio. He grabbed Natasha's whole body, with all the strength he had left considering that he was bleeding.

And the whole building exploded.'


End file.
